Consumers Energy 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.
The stepped-up inspection program is part of Consumers Energy’s Reliability Roadmap – its commitment to reduce the number and length of power outages.
“There are so many tactics and techniques that are helping us build a stronger power grid, and one of the most fundamental starts at ground level,” said Greg Salisbury, Consumers Energy’s vice president of electric distribution engineering. “We’re working to pinpoint problems and fix them before they lead to power outages. This is one way we keep the lights on for our friends and neighbors.”
Consumers Energy made a stronger commitment to inspections in 2022, when the company made a point to visually check for problems on half of its roughly 51,000-mile overhead low-voltage distribution system – the poles and wires that feed directly to nearly 2 million Michigan homes and businesses. Inspectors are trained to identify issues that need repair, traveling circuits on so-called “blue sky” days.
Other tactics in the Reliability Roadmap include increased line clearing, new technology, iron poles, burying power lines and a robotic dog.
“Committing to eyeballing the portion of our system that serves customers makes an impact. That’s especially true when we follow through on it diligently,” Salisbury said.
“We’ve been able to repair over 17,500 issues that our team identified in the past two years. By finding and fixing issues, we prevent them from becoming a problem for the people who count on us.”
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.
Consumers aims for a tree trimming cycle of 5 to 9 years, depending on circuit voltages, for an average or “effective cycle” of 7 years. But in practice, the current average effective cycle is nearly 10 years because of a trimming backlog.
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.
Earlier this year, 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 automatic transfer reclosers (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 by isolating outages to the smallest area possible.
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.
Additionally, earlier this year, Consumers Energy purchased 1,200 iron utility poles, a $3.5 million investment, in an effort to make overhead power lines more resilient. The utility says these poles are stronger, lighter and longer lasting than their traditional wooden counterpart, as they are engineered to resist fire and the effects of Michigan’s harsh weather, and are not vulnerable to wood decay, woodpeckers, insects or other wildlife.
