Consumers Energy believes its investment in smart technology for Michigan’s electric grid is paying off, with the utility claiming the tech kept the lights on for over 72,000 customers who “would have otherwise lost power at some point” this year.
Automatic transfer reclosers (ATRs), can be thanked for that, Consumers Energy said. So far in 2024, Consumers Energy projects those 72,000-plus customers would have lost power for a total of over 350,000 hours.
“Consumers Energy is building a stronger grid with our Reliability Roadmap, and it’s also a smarter one that will keep more people from losing power in the first place,” said Greg Salisbury, Consumers Energy’s vice president of electric distribution engineering. “The results that we’re seeing from our ATRs and other technological tools show us that we’re on the right path to better serving our friends and neighbors 24/7/365.”
Consumers Energy is installing over 100 ATRs across Michigan this year – it has almost 550 at work across the state now – and plans to continue adding more as part of its reliability roadmap. The utility said it is trying to reach two long-term goals- ensuring no more than 100,000 customers lose power “even after the worst storms,” and always restoring power in 24 hours or less.
In October, Consumers Energy said it is working to inspect a “record” amount of low-voltage electric lines in Michigan this year: the utility plans to cover 25,500 miles by the year’s end – more than the circumference of the Earth at the equator.
Earlier this year, Consumers Energy agreed to pay a $1 million fine over complaints of faulty meters and delays in electric and gas service. A recent audit also showed that Consumers Energy is lagging behind other utilities in its restoration times. The Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) released results in September from an audit of DTE Electric Co. and Consumers Energy Co., an examination of the operations of the state’s two largest electric utilities aimed at getting to the root causes of low reliability and slow service restoration times.
Consumers’ 2022 and 2023 CAIDI metrics both including and excluding MEDs were in the 4th Quartile, worse than average among utilities. Consumers’ 2022 and 2023 SAIDI metrics placed them in the 4th Quartile including MEDs and in the 3rd Quartile excluding MEDs.
Consumers operates an unusually high number of different low distribution voltages, owing to mergers over the years with legacy utilities. This requires Consumers to use isolating transformers to connect circuits with different voltages. The diverse and non-standard substation and circuit assets require the utility to maintain mobile substations and additional inventory beyond what’s needed for standard voltage substations and circuits, the audit said.
More than 10% of Consumers’ customers experienced four or more interruptions (CEMI4) and more than 25% of its customers experienced interruptions of eight hours or more (CELID8hours) in 2023. Additionally, the utility’s use of catchall “weather” and “unknown” cause codes for outages is imprecise and masks what actually causes outages, MPSC said.
In May, Consumers Energy announced it would invest nearly $24 million in smart technology to prevent power outages and keep the lights on for customers. Nearly 3,000 line sensors – the most that Consumers Energy has ever installed in a year – and over 100 ATRs are being deployed throughout Michigan. Consumers Energy estimates ATRs have helped to prevent hundreds of thousands of outages over the past few years. In 2023 alone, ATRs prevented outages for nearly 70,000 customers.
Smart technology is a key component of the reliability roadmap, Consumers Energy’s plan for a smarter and stronger electric grid. The plan also includes investments in forestry work and infrastructure upgrades, with tactics like installing iron poles to withstand Michigan’s severe weather and burying overhead powerlines.
