When Xcel Energy shut off power to over 100,000 customers across Colorado’s Front Range on December 19, 2025, they claimed it was necessary to prevent wildfires. What they didn’t mention was that this multi-day Xcel Energy Colorado blackout—which left our house without power for five days—was the predictable result of years of underinvestment in grid infrastructure while paying out billions in shareholder dividends.
This wasn’t an unavoidable natural disaster response. This was a utility company pushing the massive economic cost of their poor planning onto customers.
Five Days in the Dark
Our house was among roughly 52,000 customers initially affected by the Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS), though a second PSPS event on December 21, 2025 impacted an additional 69,000 customers. Most people had their power restored within a day or two; we weren’t so lucky.
The winds that prompted the shutoff died down by Friday afternoon, December 21, 2025. Yet it took until Sunday night—more than two full days later—for our power to come back on. This despite the fact that our neighborhood has underground power lines and homes just a couple blocks away had power restored quickly.
There was clearly no damage to lines around us; it just took Xcel days to flip the switch back on.
The Staggering Economic Cost
Let’s do some math. How much did this PSPS actually cost Colorado?
According to Berkeley Lab research, the cost of a 1-hour outage for an average residential customer is approximately $3. For our five-day outage (120 hours), that’s $360 per household. But that’s just the beginning.
For small-to-medium commercial customers, a 1-hour outage costs approximately $1,200, and for large commercial and industrial customers, it’s approximately $82,000 per hour.
Let’s be conservative and assume this December PSPS affected:
- 100,000 residential customers for an average of 2 days (48 hours): 100,000 × 48 × $3 = $14.4 million
- 5,000 small businesses for an average of 2 days: 5,000 × 48 × $1,200 = $288 million
- 100 large commercial/industrial customers for an average of 2 days: 100 × 48 × $82,000 = $393.6 million
Total estimated economic impact: ~$689 million
And that’s probably conservative. It doesn’t fully capture:
- Spoiled food in tens of thousands of refrigerators and freezers
- Lost productivity from workers unable to get to closed offices
- Critical infrastructure like wastewater treatment plants running on backup power
- School closures disrupting families
- Medical equipment failures and injuries
- The compounding effects throughout the economy
For context, power outages cost U.S. businesses $150 billion annually, and the 2021 Texas blackouts caused economic losses estimated between $80 billion and $130 billion.
Criticism #1: Chronic Underinvestment While Enriching Shareholders
Xcel Energy agreed to pay $640 million to settle the Marshall Fire lawsuit in September 2025, following the devastating 2021 wildfire that destroyed more than 1,000 homes and killed two people. Investigators concluded that the fire was most probably caused by hot particles discharged from Xcel Energy powerlines.
You’d think that, after being held responsible for Colorado’s most destructive wildfire in history, Xcel would have immediately invested heavily in preventing future catastrophes. But, instead, they’ve been systematically enriching shareholders while under-investing in the infrastructure needed to prevent exactly the kind of crisis that forced this PSPS.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
From their own financial reports, Xcel has been paying out massive dividends:
- 2023: $2.08 per share annual dividend
- 2024: $2.19 per share annual dividend
- 2025: Approximately $2.28 per share annual dividend
With approximately 574 million shares outstanding in 2025, that’s roughly $1.3 billion paid out in dividends in 2025 alone.
Xcel has increased dividends for 22 consecutive years, maintaining a payout ratio around 65%. Meanwhile, they’re asking for rate increases and claiming they need to shut off power because the grid isn’t resilient enough.
What They Could Have Done Instead
Xcel’s Wildfire Mitigation Plan includes $2 billion in Colorado investments, and they’re planning $5 billion for wildfire mitigation nationally over five years. But here’s the problem: much of this is being pushed onto ratepayers through rate increases, not taken from the billions in profits that went to shareholders.
The technologies to prevent wildfires exist:
Undergrounding Power Lines: Undergrounding can reduce the risk of wildfire ignition from electrical equipment by approximately 98%. Yes, it’s expensive—PG&E estimates about $3.3 million per mile—but it’s far cheaper than the combined costs of lawsuits and power shutoffs.
Covered Conductors: Covered conductors prevent sparks when lines fall to the ground and eliminate ignition risk from tree contact or conductor clashing. These cost roughly 1/7th the price of undergrounding while still providing substantial fire risk reduction.
Advanced Sensors and Monitoring: Optical sensors can detect anomalies in conductor position, temperature, and sag, allowing operators to prevent equipment failures before they cause ignitions.
Enhanced Powerline Safety Settings (EPSS): Automated systems that shut off powerlines more easily if disturbed by wind or debris, preventing energized lines from sparking fires.
Xcel presented customers with a false choice: either suffer through multi-day blackouts OR risk devastating wildfires. The real choice should have been: invest the billions paid to shareholders in grid hardening, or lose your monopoly.
Criticism #2: Woefully Underprepared for Restoration
Even if we accept for the sake of argument that the power had to be shut off, the restoration was unacceptably slow.
Xcel stated that restoration “could take several hours to several days” because crews needed to inspect lines. But here’s what actually happened in our neighborhood:
- Friday afternoon: Winds died down, conditions safe for crews
- Friday night through Sunday morning: No Xcel workers, trucks, drones, or helicopters visible anywhere in our area
- Sunday evening: Power finally restored
We didn’t see a single Xcel employee until moments before our power came back on. For a neighborhood with underground lines and no visible damage anywhere nearby, it shouldn’t have taken 48+ hours just to flip the switch.
Where Were the Crews?
Xcel claimed they were “working day and night to restore power”, but social media was filled with people reporting they never saw crews working at night. All of Xcel’s own video updates only showed daytime work.
When we lived on the Gulf Coast, utility companies would bring in crews from neighboring states after hurricanes to speed restoration. It’s a standard mutual aid practice in the utility industry. Xcel apparently made no such arrangements, relying solely on their regular crews to handle an outage affecting over 100,000 customers.
This isn’t preparation. This is negligence.
The Communication Disaster
Last year’s April 2024 PSPS was criticized for communication failures, and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission investigated and required improvements. Yet Xcel somehow managed to perform even worse this time.
We received a cascade of contradictory messages:
- Power will be restored by Friday 4 PM
- Actually, Friday 8 PM
- Now Saturday 11 AM
- Oops, Saturday 4 PM
- Try Saturday 8 PM
- Maybe Sunday 11 AM
- Perhaps Sunday 4 PM
Each revised estimate was presented with the same confident tone, making it impossible to plan around the outage. If they didn’t know when power would be restored, they should have said so. Instead, they repeatedly lied to their customers with false precision.
Criticism #3: A Master Class in How NOT to Communicate During a Crisis
Xcel used this PSPS to demonstrate textbook failures in crisis communication. I recall studying crisis management in business school, where we learned that leaders in a crisis should:
- Take ownership – Acknowledge your role and responsibility
- Show empathy – Demonstrate understanding of the harm being caused
- Provide accurate information – Even if incomplete, be honest about what you know and don’t know
- Be visible – Leaders should be on the front lines
Xcel failed on every single count.
No Ownership
Xcel’s messaging consistently framed the PSPS as something that simply “had to be done” due to weather conditions. They refused to acknowledge that this was a choice—one driven by their underinvestment in grid resilience. They “do not admit any fault, wrongdoing or negligence” for the Marshall Fire despite the settlement, and they took the same stance here: this isn’t our fault, it’s the weather.
No Empathy
Rather than expressing genuine concern for the hundreds of thousands of people suffering without power, Xcel’s communications pleaded with customers to “be patient” and “be nice to our staff.” While it’s appropriate to ask people to treat workers respectfully, leading with that message rather than expressing empathy for the disruption they caused was tone-deaf.
Inaccurate Information
The repeated, false restoration estimates destroyed any credibility Xcel might have had. Each message essentially told customers: “We have no idea when your power will be back, but here’s a random time we made up.”
Invisible Leadership
Where was Xcel’s Colorado President Robert Kenney during all of this? Where were the executives holding press conferences, touring affected neighborhoods, or showing up at community centers? Crisis leadership requires visibility and accountability. We got neither.
The Bigger Picture: A Broken Social Contract
When you are a utility—whether government-owned or private—and you are granted a monopoly over essential services, you enter into a social contract with your community. You promise to provide safe, reliable service to all customers. In exchange, you get guaranteed revenue and protection from competition.
Xcel has broken that contract.
They paid a $640 million settlement for causing the Marshall Fire, with $350 million coming from insurance and the rest recorded as a “charge to earnings”—which means either future ratepayers or shareholders ultimately pay, though Xcel claims “ratepayers will not be forced to cover any of the remaining cost.” They’ve continued paying massive shareholder dividends. They’ve underinvested in grid hardening. And, when the consequences of that underinvestment came due, they pushed the entire cost onto customers through a multi-day blackout affecting over 100,000 customers.
The estimated ~$689 million economic impact of this PSPS is roughly equivalent to the entire Marshall Fire settlement. By choosing to underprepare, Xcel has essentially created another Marshall Fire-scale disaster—except this time, the damage is economic rather than physical, and it’s spread across tens of thousands of victims instead of concentrated in two towns.
What Needs to Happen Now
- Legal Action: Class action lawsuits should be filed on behalf of affected customers and businesses for the economic damages caused by Xcel’s negligent under-preparation.
- Regulatory Investigation: The Colorado Public Utilities Commission should investigate not just the communication failures (again), but the fundamental question of whether Xcel has been meeting its obligation to maintain adequate grid resilience.
- Rate Case Opposition: Xcel is currently seeking rate increases. Every one should be denied until they can demonstrate they’ve invested adequately in grid hardening rather than shareholder enrichment.
- Monopoly Review: When a utility repeatedly fails to meet its obligations under a monopoly franchise, that franchise should be up for review. Colorado should seriously consider whether Xcel deserves to continue as the monopoly provider, or whether the service should be taken over by a public utility that will prioritize reliability over profits.
- Required Investments: Mandate specific grid hardening targets: X miles of undergrounding in high-risk areas, Y miles of covered conductors, Z installations of advanced monitoring systems—all funded from earnings before dividends are paid.
The Path Forward
We don’t have to choose between wildfires and blackouts. Southern California Edison has reduced catastrophic wildfire risk by 85-88% below pre-2018 levels through grid hardening, including undergrounding and covered conductors. It can be done.
But it requires utilities to prioritize infrastructure investment over shareholder returns. It requires regulators to hold utilities accountable. And it requires customers to demand better.
Xcel Energy failed Colorado this December. They failed us in the Marshall Fire. They’ll keep failing us until the consequences of that failure outweigh the benefits of underinvestment.
It’s time to make sure those consequences are real.
Have you been affected by Xcel’s power shutoffs? I want to hear your story. Share your experiences in the comments below or reach out directly. The more we document the real costs of these failures, the harder it becomes for Xcel to claim this is acceptable.