Snow covering the Business Field at the University of Colorado Boulder. (Gray Bender/CU Independent File)
Multiple buildings across Boulder experienced power outages on Monday. This included residential buildings, as well as some campus buildings. Xcel Energy, the local service provider, is currently working to restore power to areas affected.
Xcel Energy spokesperson Michelle Aguayo said that at the height of the outages, around 9:30 a.m., around 5,000 customers in the Boulder area lost power. As of this story’s publication, over half of those have had power restored.
Aguayo said that these outages were due to what’s called a transmission event. There are a number of possible causes for a transmission event, but Aguayo said that the cause is never provided. This type of power outage is different from a smaller-scale event, like a downed wire or blown transformer, as it usually affects more people.
On campus, buildings in the Grandview area experienced brief power outages in the moring. This included the Armory, Continuing Education and the Institute of Behavioral Sciences. The Lesser House, on Colorado Ave., also lost power. Josh Lindenstein, spokesperson for Facilities Management on campus, confirmed that some of the buildings are back online. Most of main campus, as well as east campus, was not affected by power outages.
Outages are continuing, with another wave occurring around 12:30 p.m.
Throughout the day, students reported outages via the Wildfire app on the Hill, as well as in the residential area north of Pearl Street and the housing just east of 28th Street. The app allows for individuals to directly notify a geographic area of an issue, instead of waiting for authorities to release an alert.
Power outages also affected a few street intersections. Broadway and University Ave. briefly saw flashing red stoplights.
Xcel shows the reported power outages on its website. Customers can also report outages through a form there, or by calling Xcel directly.
The campus was on a delayed start schedule today due to winter weather conditions with classes starting before 9:45 a.m. canceled.
This story will be updated to reflect power outages throughout the day.
Contact CU Independent Copy Editor Lucy Haggard at lucy.haggard@colorado.edu.
