Xcel Energy addresses call for customers to reduce power usage

NEW MEXICO (KRQE) – Xcel Energy is speaking out on what caused the company to ask eastern and southeastern New Mexico customers to reduce their energy usage Monday night . The company issued an alert on Monday asking some of its Texas and New Mexico customers in several counties to cut back on their energy usage until 9 p.m. to prevent outages.

They asked customers to turn off lights, appliances, and air conditioning unless needed for health reasons. About 126,000 residential and industrial customers were impacted.

A spokesperson for the company said unplanned maintenance on some generating units and the hot weather caused them to issue the alert as a precautionary measure. “We issued the conservation appeals knowing that at this point, if something else were to break or we had another unit offline, we would be in a load shed situation,” said Spokesperson Wes Reeves.

Xcel Energy said there is a growing demand in the area as new customers are using more energy. The company said they are in the process of getting new equipment to meet the need and replace some of their generators which date back to the 1960s.

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