Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is urging the state's two largest utility companies to proactively issue credits to electricity customers who lost power during last week's ice storm.
The Plymouth Democrat argued DTE Energy and Consumers Energy should have an electric infrastructure that can hold up during an ice storm, noting "winter weather is an expected occurrence in Michigan."
"Despite asking for record (rate) increases time and time again, our utilities have failed to adequately invest in their own infrastructure or prepare for these storm events, choosing instead to leave ratepayers in the dark," Nessel said in a statement. "Our current service quality standards are not sufficient, and it is incumbent on the utilities to right this wrong."
Nessel's request came a day after Michigan House Majority Floor Leader Abraham Aiyash, D-Hamtramck, called for committee hearings on the outages and as frustration over the prolonged outages builds among the state's elected officials.
Detroit-based DTE Energy said it would issue automatic credits of $35 if a resident lost power for more than 96 hours.
A spokeswoman for Jackson-based Consumers Energy said the company understands "the frustration of our customers and will continue working to restore each home and business impacted by last week's ice storm."
"We are reviewing the customer impact and will work directly with customers on any outage credit they qualify for," Consumers Energy spokeswoman Katie Carey said.
Individuals wishing to contact DTE Energy or Consumers Energy to request a refund should call DTE at (800) 477-4747 or Consumers at (800) 477-5050.
The Michigan Public Service Commission last March approved changes to state rules that would require all regulated utilities to increase their power outage credit rates from $25 to $35, plus $35 extra for additional days past a certain benchmark. But the rate increase and looser criteria for qualification doesn't go into effect until next month.
Under Michigan's current outage credit requirements, residents who lose power in normal conditions — such as a small storm or other malfunction — can receive a $25 outage credit on their monthly bill if they're out of power for more than 16 hours. But the resident has to request the credit.
Current outage credit requirements have different rules for what are considered catastrophic conditions — where a storm or other event results in outages to more than 10% of a utility's customers. Under catastrophic conditions, a customer must be out of power for 120 hours or five full days before they can request a $25 credit.
Under the rule change expected to take effect in March, customers who lost power amid catastrophic conditions would receive an automatic $35 credit if they lost power for more than 96 hours and another $35 credit for each additional outage day after that.
As of Monday morning, DTE and Consumers said they had restored electricity service to 774,000 of the 867,000 customers who lost power in Wednesday night's ice storm. There were about 98,000 customers between DTE and Consumers in southern Michigan without power Monday afternoon as a new ice storm rolled through the state.
The utilities last week had assured customers about 95% would have power restored by Sunday night.
DTE Energy had more than 630,000 customers without power and Consumers had about 237,000 at the peak of outages. A little after 7 a.m. Monday, DTE had 61,287 customers still without power and Consumers had 31,890.
In a press release Monday, Nessel noted the utilities' regulator, the Michigan Public Service Commission, determined in March 2022 that utilities were expected to anticipate and harden their grids for extreme weather and "restore power expediently" when there is an outage.
The attorney general also requested the immediate release of an independent audit of the electrical distribution systems of DTE and Consumers that the Michigan Public Service Commission ordered in October.
Additional measures to hold the utilities accountable, include putting into statute requirements for automatic and more substantial outage credits and better measurements of the effectiveness of money spent on electric reliability.
