Aspen experiences second power outage in two months

For the second time in two months, Aspen experienced yet another power outage; however, according to Aspen Director of Utilities Justin Forman, Monday night’s outage was considerably smaller in comparison, affecting only 25% of the city’s power system.

At 8:41 p.m. on Monday, select areas within Aspen were impacted by a power outage that lasted nearly 40 minutes with crews succeeding in restoring power of all affected residents by 9:22 p.m. He said that the fast return to power was a testament to the Electric Department’s “commitment to and knowledge of” the electric system coupled with their quick response. 

“The city of Aspen has redundant feeds to get power restored as fast as possible given each circumstance,” he said. “The reliability of the city’s electric system is something the department does not take lightly or for granted, and the department will continue monitoring and making changes, if required, to continue providing reliable electric service to the community.”

This latest outage comes on the heels of another recent incident that took place on Dec. 29 of last year, which saw nearly half of the city without power for roughly less than two hours before city crews were able to fully resolve the issue for everyone affected.

According to a city press release, Monday’s outage stemmed from a malfunction at the connection between a primary underground cable and a transformer, similarly mirroring the cause behind December’s outage, as well, which involved a malfunction in one of the primary cables responsible for feeding energy to the downtown core and west end.

Forman said that while Monday’s outage was not the same piece of electrical infrastructure that failed in December, both failures were connected to the same circuit. In the ongoing battle against aging infrastructure, the city is currently three years into a fifteen-year cable and conduit replacement project. In response to both outages, he said that city staff have moved up the project’s design to 2025, with construction scheduled for 2026.

“Ultimately, all this infrastructure is important and planned for replacement,” he said. “Our approach to infrastructure management remains consistent: We continually reassess our systems and decisions using the latest available information.” 

On Feb. 27, Aspen City Council approved year three of the conduit and cable replacement project, named the Paepcke Park to City Market. The project focuses on the north side of Wagner Park as well as replacements focused further west toward Garmisch and Paepcke Park. Forman said that while staff continues to evaluate and design circuit replacements, reprioritizing segments will occur should system conditions change at any point.

“These two outages were different in cause, and the Electric Department did not receive customer calls or experience system issues prior to either event,” he said. “We understand that power interruptions are not desirable, and we strive to minimize any impact.”

He said that Pitkin alerts are still the best source of information for various important updates and can be accessed through pitkincounty.com/290/Emergency-Information. The city’s social media channels are also good resources for outage update information. He added that the utilities department would like to extend its many thanks to the community for continued patience and understanding during these events.

To reach Jonson Kuhn, email him at [email protected].