Residents and business owners whose neighborhood along South Broadway became an emblem last year of power outages striking pockets of Xcel Energy’s system are encouraged by a new state report showing that the time customers lost power doubled last year compared to historic trends.

“We feel validated that their findings were what we’ve been telling them, that this particular corridor was more adversely affected than other surrounding areas,” said Caitlin Braun, a business person in the West Washington Park neighborhood.

But Braun said random power outages are continuing in a multi-block stretch of 178 businesses and households bordered by South Broadway, Lincoln Street, West Third and West Bayaud avenues. Restaurants and bars are still losing business and food when the electricity goes off with no word of when it will come back on.

And Braun said the people affected don’t know if they can recoup losses caused by the outages and aren’t sure how the situation will be improved.

“Thanks for confirming. It’s good to have that information from a third party,” Braun said. “But it’s like, OK, what do we do?”

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission seemed to be wrestling with the same questions last week when the staff presented one report showing a dramatic jump in the time Xcel customers didn’t have power and another highlighting problems with the utility’s quality of customer service.

The PUC opened an investigation last year into the power outages after getting numerous complaints from the Front Range to the Western Slope. The PUC staff began looking into Xcel Energy’s customer service when the agency reported getting a number of complaints.

The staff reported that in 2024, the average customer experienced 350 minutes, or nearly six hours, without electricity compared to the trend of 166 minutes from 2015 to 2023. Outage minutes per customer in 2024 were above the historical trend in six of Xcel’s nine regions. The length of power outages has trended up from 2015 through 2023.

The staff’s investigation found that customers on the 15 worst performing feeders, which distribute power from a substation, experienced 18% of the outage minutes in 2024. The 15 feeders make up 2% of the total.

Seven of the worst feeders were in Boulder; two were in the San Luis Valley; three were in metro Denver; and three were in other spots along the Front Range.

Staffers recommended requiring Xcel Energy to provide more detailed locations of outages and more information in its logs of outages.

Erin O’Neill, deputy director of fixed utilities, said Xcel’s customer support staffing levels dropped roughly 20% from 2022 to 2024. The customer contact center’s budget was 5% lower in 2024 than in 2020.

Over the same time period, Xcel Energy’s electric rates rose 30%, according to the report. The rate of complaints surged 100% from 2022 to 2024.

Some key points of state reports:

• The time that customers on Xcel Energy’s system lost power doubled in 2024 compared to historic trends.

• Fifteen of Xcel’s more than 800 feeders distributing electricity accounted for 18% of the outage minutes.

• Customer complaints rose 100% from 2022 to 2024.

• Overall satisfaction with Xcel’s customer support dropped 17% from 2020 to 2024.