JEFFERSON COUNTY, Colo. — Joe Del Cueto is now spending a second night in a motel, unable to return to the century-old home where he has lived for 31 years. On Wednesday morning, Xcel Energy cut power to his home and the houses around his as a precautionary measure ahead of dangerous wind conditions.
Del Cueto is among thousands of Colorado customers still without electricity days after the utility company implemented a Public Safety Power Shutoff affecting approximately 50,000 customers in Boulder, Larimer, Jefferson, Weld and Clear Creek counties. The planned outages, combined with wind damage that caused additional unplanned service disruptions, left more than 160,000 customers without power at the peak of Wednesday’s outages, according to Robert Kenney, president of Xcel Energy Colorado.
“It just went down, and it wasn’t windy,” Del Cueto said of the Wednesday morning shutoff. “It wasn’t windy at all.”…