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The 'wild' world of outages.

Common causes of power outages in our area

While the number of outages our members experience vary from season-to-season and year-to-year, we’re proud to report that our 10-year numbers are on a solid downward trend. That means our members are experiencing fewer and shorter outages than in years past.

As hard as our system operations teams work on prevention measures, we might never live in a world that’s completely free of power outages. Thankfully, our operations crews will always be around to work 24/7 and restore outages as quickly as possible.

The power can go out for some wild reasons. Here are some of the most common reasons:

Wild weather...

Over the last two decades, 80% of all major US power outages were due to weather, according to analysis by Climate Central.

While we’re lucky to avoid the widespread damage caused by tornados and hurricanes, lightning from severe thunderstorms is a frequent cause of knocking out power on our grid. 

Beyond lightning, strong winds in our area can send trees and branches onto powerlines to cause outages. In the shoulder seasons, wet and heavy snowstorms can weigh down lines enough to cause blinks and outages, too.

Wildlife...

Nationally, wildlife interaction is the second most common cause of power outages, and our area is no exception. 

While we do all we can to physically protect our equipment from wildlife interference, animals that climb or land on electrical equipment can short transformers and trip circuit breakers. 

Each spring, we also typically will see a few outages caused by wet, heavy osprey nests falling onto power lines (pictured here).

Wildfire safety...

When the National Weather Service issues a “Red Flag Warning” anywhere in our service territory, we modify our system operations to reduce the chance of an electrical fire in that part of our territory. 

Also known as “fast tripping”, this more sensitive setting will cut power at line relays faster than normal settings. As a result, members may experience power “blinks” or short outages.

Importantly, these higher sensitivity settings decrease the risk of wildfire ignition in the event a tree or debris falls on the power line.

Beyond the system settings on high risk days, our tree crews work year-round to maintain vegetation in our power line right-of-ways, further reducing the risk of tree-related outages and wildfire ignition (pictured here). 

More on Wildfire safety

...and all sorts of other wildcards!

The electric grid is a complex network of complicated equipment. We continuously work to upgrade facilities and infrastructure, but unexpected failures can and do happen. Our crews are on call 24/7 to restore outages as quickly as possible in these instances.

Outages are also not immune to human error. One fairly common human-caused outage occurs when construction crews strike underground powerlines. But that’s easy to prevent: Remember to always call or click before you dig! Have your underground utilities marked to prevent outages, and even more importantly, to ensure your safety while digging. 

More info > Colorado811.org