Driving into Golden with my fiancée on Wednesday night, we entered what felt like a ghost town. Streetlights vanished. Buildings went dark. Darkness surrounded us.

For several minutes, we experienced what tens of thousands of Coloradans were feeling — life without power in the night. And not the sweet, romantic, candlelit kind.

Xcel Energy’s planned Public Safety Power Shutoff (PSPS) — triggered by wicked winds and impacting roughly 100,000 people — is having real-world consequences.

Businesses shut down, losing customers. Employees have been sent home, losing hours. Students in a few districts — most notably Jeffco Schools, Colorado’s second largest — are losing classroom time just before Christmas break. Families have lost untold amounts of spoiled food. And on it goes.

Xcel and its government partners brush it off as an unavoidable “inconvenience.” That’s an understatement.

These are real-world harms thrust upon real Coloradans, especially lower-income families already struggling to make ends meet.

Xcel isn’t reimbursing them for ruined groceries or lost wages. It isn’t handing out backup chargers to families that can’t just swing one on a moment’s notice, especially when they’ve spent their holiday budgets.

To be fair, there’s an understandable reason: the threat of wildfire.

Almost four years ago, Coloradans endured the Marshall Fire, the most destructive wildfire in state history. Nearly 40,000 people were forced to evacuate. Two lives were lost, and more than 1,000 structures, mostly homes, were destroyed.

The fire ignited from week-old embers at the Twelve Tribes site, amid extremely dry conditions, abundant dry grass and fierce 115mph winds, rapidly spreading the flames. An hour later, a spark at an Xcel powerline accelerated the disaster.

Xcel faced hundreds of lawsuits over that spark, including suits brought by Boulder County, Superior and Louisville. The company ultimately settled, paying out millions.

PSPS is Xcel’s big response — a safety mechanism to reduce wildfire risk by cutting power during extreme weather conditions.

It’s the kind of thing we’ve seen in California, where PSPS is no longer a last resort but the standard fire-season practice. Is this what’s in store for Colorado?

Xcel would never admit it, but let’s be honest: This is as much about dollars, cents and liability as it is about public safety — if not more.

Other utilities have taken a different approach, emphasizing proactive fire mitigation. As the Longmont Leader reported, Longmont Power & Communications contracts year-round with a tree-trimming company “to minimize the risk of vegetation damaging power lines during storms.” The city has also begun moving electrical lines underground where feasible.

These investments matter. Longmont and Lyons didn’t need to shut off electricity this week — largely because of their enhanced powerline safety settings, which automatically cut off a powerline when a fault is detected. In most cases, that’s all it should take.

With shutoffs, crews must manually inspect every foot of the line before restoring power. That can take 48 to 72 hours, which is why many people may still lack power as you read this.

Without more modern solutions — such as drones used in other states — shutoffs can make the solution worse than the problem.

Xcel Energy is behind the times.

In fact, Xcel’s turn to PSPS is a flashing sign that the company hasn’t sufficiently hardened its electric grid against known risks. Its potential liability exposure now outweighs the cost of outages. Regulators are all too willing to accept that tradeoff, preferring blackouts no matter the social and economic fallout.

Therein lies the bigger issue. This isn’t about Xcel being a private, shareholder-bound company while Longmont’s utility is municipally owned. Xcel is extraordinarily regulated — operating as a government-guaranteed monopoly.

Xcel had to seek approval from the Public Utilities Commission just to invest over $1 billion in grid upgrades. Approval was only granted on Monday.

Putting power lines underground is the gold standard. It’s expensive, but it’s the utility’s responsibility. Xcel should begin doing so in select locations.

Let’s be real: In Colorado, the state’s regulatory focus isn’t on hardening the grid against wildfire and wind. It’s on electrification — electric vehicles and trucks, electric homes and electric appliances.

No more gas stoves to cook your soup — when the power’s out for days.

At the very moment electricity demand grows, regulators have mandated the closure of Xcel’s coal-fired power plants in Pueblo. Comanche 1 is already shuttered. Comanche 2 was set to close next year and received only a one-year reprieve because Comanche 3 — scheduled for shutdown in 2030 — is offline for repairs.

“The state’s aggressive renewable energy targets, including those compelling Comanche’s closure, ignore the state’s long-term needs,” The Gazette recently editorialized — noting Xcel’s Clean Energy Plan will cost $12 billion to meet extraordinary greenhouse emission mandates for state utilities.

Exactly. As Colorado shrinks reliable energy sources by government edict, electricity demand keeps increasing with the population — all while Xcel pours billions into electrification mandates.

Xcel could invest more aggressively in grid hardening. But when the state’s priorities don’t align, those investments get pushed aside. Thus, preemptive power shutoffs, blamed on weather — while ratepayers foot higher bills for less reliable power.

This is insane. Xcel Energy — pushed by its government enforcers — is willfully disregarding the actual harm from actions meant to advance a political agenda.

That agenda isn’t safety or reliability. It’s electrification.

Get ready for more shutoffs. They’re about to become routine.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.