Coloradans who live in Littleton get answers about frequent power outages

After months of frustration and uncertainty, residents in a Colorado neighborhood are finally getting answers about a series of recurring power outages.

Earlier this summer, some people who live in Littleton experienced at least six outages since June, several of which had no clear explanation at the time.

Last week another outage occurred, prompting dozens of viewers to contact CBS Colorado's newsroom looking for information. In response, CBS Colorado followed up with Xcel Energy, pressing the utility for answers.

One of those impacted is Jerica, a Littleton mother of three, who says the outages are affecting both her part-time job and her children's education.

"It's to the point where it's every other week," said Jerica, who asked not to include her last name in CBS Colorado's reporting. "It's so frequent, it's almost comical. We're like, 'It's out again.'"

Jerica homeschools her children, ages 11, 9, and 6. All rely on consistent electricity to complete their schoolwork.

"There's online reading, a lot of games, and they practice typing and English," she said.

"When it happens at night, it's the worst," her youngest daughter said.

"It's scary," her son added.

In the past 90 days, there have now been seven outages, at times affecting more than 2,000 customers in the area.

"It just feels like we're not being heard," Jerica said. "We're not getting answers on what's causing this, so the root of the problem can be fixed. It's been a lot of excuses."

Earlier this month, Xcel Energy told CBS Colorado it didn't know the cause of four of the outages. Now, the company says it has identified the issue.

"Four of the outages occurred when we were under our wildfire protection settings," Xcel Regional Vice President Gilbert Salazar said.

That technology, he says, is being installed in high wildfire-risk areas across Colorado and is designed to shut down power if there's an issue with the power lines.

In the Littleton neighborhood, Xcel installed the system in January -- but admitted it was done incorrectly.

"The settings that we had in January we created a tolerance, and the tolerance is to withstand the fluctuations that we have for seasonality but they weren't set high enough. So they worked as designated for the majority of the year but when we started seeing those higher temperatures and higher demand in July and August. That's when we start getting the trip on the line and it really was a false positive," Salazar said.

Xcel says it is correcting those settings and plans to inspect other installations across the state.

"Any of the new technology we've installed in the past couple of years -- we're going to go out and verify that the tolerance is set correctly," Salazar said. "We want to make sure we don't have a similar situation like we had in Littleton."

This comes as Xcel faces increased scrutiny following a rise in outages across the Denver metro area over the past year. In April, the Colorado Public Utilities Commission placed Xcel on an improvement plan.

When asked if that pressure influenced the company's investigation, Salazar said the actions were part of an internal commitment to safety and service.

"It's not about outside pressure," he said. "It's about our drive to keep the lights on and provide safety at the same time."

Jerica says she's relieved to have some answers, but has no plans to celebrate just yet.

"It's just a 'see it to believe it' kind of thing," she said. "It's been so frequent."

In addition to the recent adjustments, Xcel now plans to implement regular, possibly annual inspections of the wildfire protection systems statewide.