Xcel Energy & Denver International Airport Looking Into ‘Rare’ Power Outage
By Ken Morfitt
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DENVER, Colorado (KCNC) — Denver International Airport experienced a brief power outage on Wednesday afternoon, which caused some issues for travelers coming to and leaving from Denver.
“I don’t know how long it was. I don’t know if they have backup generators, I assume they do,” James Lunn was at the airport during the loss of power to pick up his mother-in-law.
A spokesperson for the airport says they have experienced what they call “power bumps” before, but it is rare to have a full power outage because they have a redundant feed and backup generators.
For Lunn, the impact was minimal. It slowed down the de-planing process.
“I asked one of the ladies there, and she says while we had a power outage that’s messing up the jetways,” he said.
On social media, passengers in each concourse reported issues from blank monitors, shut down equipment like escalators. The FAA ordered a full ground stop that kept flights from departing to and from Denver.
According to airport officials the facilities, critical systems, trains, security and FAA tower were never impacted.
In a statement the spokesperson for DIA said, “When we lose any portion of our main power source, it should switch to the redundant feed. Unfortunately, we had some issues with the equipment that is fed from the redundant source, which is why some portions of the facility lost power, but not all.”
The statement goes on to say, “We continue to investigate the issue on our end, and Xcel is investigating the initial cause of the power outage.”
Overall, about 80 flights were impacted, out of about 1,700.
Xcel also issued a statement saying, “We understand the that losing power, especially at a large facility like the airport, is an inconvenience. We appreciate our customers’ patience as we worked to resolve the issue as quickly and safely as possible.”
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