Power outages reported across southeast Denver metro area, Xcel Energy says multiple substations involved – CBS News
On Sunday afternoon, residents across the southeast Denver metro area began reporting widespread outages.
A resident near the substation on S. Abeline Circle shared a video with CBS Colorado that appears to capture an explosion and a large arc of electricity coming from the substation. He said the video was taken shortly after a larger explosion occurred at the facility.
Tim Mednick 
A representative shared the following statement with CBS Colorado:
“I can confirm a large outage in the southeast side of the metro. It started at one of our substations, and crews are on the scene working on repairs and finding the cause of the outage. We appreciate our customers’ patience as our crews work as quickly as possible to safely restore power.”
They later confirmed that several substations are involved, which is why the outage was so widespread.
“Just before 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon, a transformer failed at an Xcel Energy substation, resulting in damage to other equipment. The failure and damage caused an outage that cascaded to include other substations. In all, more than 195,000 customers were initially impacted,” Xcel said in an update just before 10 p.m.
On Monday morning, Xcel confirmed the transformer that failed was located at the Abilene/Jewell substation.
The company said crews worked quickly to restore power, and the transformer is being replaced.
Denver International Airport said it was affected by Sunday’s power outage, which knocked out power to the trains for a time.
Jeaneene Wallace 
Xcel said 195,000 of its customers experienced a power outage this afternoon. As of 8:30 p.m., only 21 Xcel customers in Colorado remained without power, according to the company’s outage map.
CORE Electric says 44,350 of its customers lost power across Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas and Elbert counties. By 5:26 p.m., the co-op reported that power had been restored to all of its customers.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office reported receiving numerous calls about outages and assured residents that they are aware of the issue. They urged residents to call 911 only in an emergency and to call the non-emergency line at (303) 660-7500 for non-emergency situations.
The Parker Police Department said emergency and non-emergency lines were out of service Sunday afternoon. It reported that service was restored to emergency lines around 4:25 p.m. Aurora 911 was also temporarily affected by the outage, but service has since been restored.
