We continually monitor and upgrade our system to improve reliability and safety for our members. Below are a few significant examples of our ongoing and planned system improvements.
Throughout 2024 and 2025, we replaced several aging poles and lines along Colorado River Road north of Dotsero. This important safety work has improved the resilience of one of the oldest sections of our electric distribution system.
Due to the rugged and remote location of this project, our crews place new power poles and cables using helicopter assistance. Thanks to all members who live and work in this area for their patience as our crews worked to complete this important work as quickly and safely as possible.
Each spring and summer, our crews may be in your area performing routine inspection and audit work on our electric lines and poles. Proactive inspections play an important role in ensuring the:
In addition to our own staff, we also work with third-party authorized contractors to perform much of this work. All field teams will have required personal protective gear, ID badges, and Holy Cross Energy vehicle decals. To ensure safe and efficient work, some of our contractors are now using drone technology to complete their inspections.
Drone pilots will determine the safest location to take off and land, which occasionally falls outside of our overhead easement and right-of-way.
If you have questions about a drone or an inspection crew in your area, please call us. For safety reasons, please do not approach the pilot while the drone is in the air.
We greatly appreciate your patience and understanding as we complete this important safety and reliability work.
Throughout the year, we invest heavily in proactive line inspections, including:
These efforts help reduce both outage frequency and wildfire risk and help us identify and correct system issues before they become failures.
Holy Cross Energy is proud to lead a consortium of 38 electric co-ops and other rural utilities selected to receive federal funding through the Wildfire Assessment and Resilience for Networks project (WARN), created by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
WARN projects will modernize and strengthen our nation’s electric grid, protecting customers’ access to electricity during wildfires as well as mitigating the risk of wildfires due to our nation’s aging transmission and distribution infrastructure.
Holy Cross Energy proposes to construct an 8.65-mile-long 115 kV transmission line connecting Avon and Gilman substations. Construction and operation of the new transmission line would provide increased service resilience and minimize substantial outage risk to customers in the communities of Vail, Eagle Vail, Avon, Edwards, and parts of Eagle as well as provide a back-up electrical transmission service for the towns of Minturn and Red Cliff and all Xcel customers in that area.
Birds—most of them federally protected—perch, hunt, nest, and fly in the vicinity of overhead electrical infrastructure. These activities have the potential to lead to avian electrocutions and collisions, which may negatively impact safety and reliability. Avian management can reduce harmful avian power line interactions for the benefit of avian conservation, system operators, and power users.
Holy Cross Energy works proactively to protect avian species on our electrical system. In 2003, we first developed an Avian Protection Plan to minimize potential electrocution and collision hazards for birds on its existing power grid and improve compliance with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, and Endangered Species Act.
As part of our ongoing commitment to protect bird species, this 2019 Avian Protection Plan provides a primary resource for activities relating to avian protection. The document is relevant to management, engineers, and field personnel, and reflects contemporary best industry practice and the current status of federal and state regulatory and permitting systems.
We have completed two phases of our “middle mile” network infrastructure project, installing fiber in the Roaring Fork and Eagle River Valleys to enhance our system communications.
Additionally, the fiber serves as an opportunity for third-party broadband internet companies to bring service into remote areas of our service territory that lack high speed internet access.