But Rood said they are more intense in many places, not just Michigan.
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin all have far fewer outages, the data shows.
“It’s really hard to say Michigan is seeing more severe weather than anywhere in the Midwest,” Rood said.
For consumer advocates, the cause is rooted in how the utility companies have maintained their sprawling systems.
Delayed investments?
Amy Bandyk, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan, laid the blame on the state’s utilities past “lack of focus” on strategies like tree trimming.
“DTE and Consumers Energy are trying to play catchup now and speeding up the cycles with which they trim trees, but the damage to their performance has been done,” Bandyk said in a statement.
She said Michigan had the sixth-longest outage duration in the country in 2021.
No one disputes the low reliability rankings of the state’s biggest utility companies, which have an outage duration rate nearly twice the national average,
And both Consumers and DTE told Bridge about their past work and ongoing plans to improve the systems. (DTE Energy and Consumers Energy are funders of Bridge Michigan.)
Scripps, the PSC chair, said the companies are improving their systems but that more needs to be done.
Since December, the PSC has approved rate increases for DTE and Consumers that include funding to improve reliability. That puts some of the burden on customers, who will pay more for power while already having the highest residential rates in the region and among the highest in the country.
Those increases come as the average residential bill in Michigan — $92.85 a month for 500 kilowatt hours of power — is 17% higher than the Great Lakes average of $79.55 and 11% higher than the U.S. average of $82.40.
Brian Calka, DTE’s vice president of distribution, said the utility’s tree trimming “surge” has decreased outages 40% to 50% in some areas.
So far, the utility has implemented the program in 85% of its service area and hopes to complete the program by the end of next year, Calka said.
“We recognize through our metrics and data and very acute focus on the customers that we need to do better — and that we needed to do better back in the 2018, 2019 time period,” Calka said.
“… By no means are we sitting back, and we’re happy and content with the performance that we have provided our customers as it relates to reliability.”
That’s what has made the most recent outages more frustrating for the utilities and customers — they’ve occurred despite the additional work across the state.
In the Midwest, the total precipitation of worst storms — the top 1% — rose 42% from 1958 to 2016, according to Great Lakes Sciences and Assessments.
“We are shooting at a moving target,” Consumer’s Salisbury said, “because the (utility) assets are aging, the trees are growing, and customer demand is changing. And we have this increasingly severe weather.”
Are regulators strict enough?
Michigan regulators have granted rate increases in recent years, but reduced the size of those requests.
Regulators also raised the amount the utilities must pay customers who lose power — $38 a day, up from $25 — and lowered the length of time before an outage is considered “unacceptable.”
Bandyk, the consumer advocate, has long been critical of the utilities and the Public Service Commission.
But she acknowledged “that is being stricter with the utilities, but ultimately to motivate the utilities to really change their behavior for the benefit of customers.”
One industry analyst firm, S&P Global, wrote that Michigan’s regulation system has created a “most credit supportive” environment for utility companies.
That’s not a badge of honor, CUB’s Bandyk said. She wishes the commission would require more of the utility companies it regulates and force them to dig deeper into their profits to create more reliable systems that benefit consumers.
Consumers had a net income of $876 million in 2023, for a profit margin of nearly 12%, while DTE had net income of $1.4 billion in 2023 for a profit margin of 11%. Both utilities increased profit margins in 2023.
Scripps, the PSC chair, said the regulator has demanded more of the state’s utility companies, and not just Consumers and DTE.
