With 2024 coming to a close, Consumers Energy crews are wrapping up the remaining 1,350 major projects in the company’s Reliability Roadmap.
The utility is spending a combined $63.5 million on the 1,350 projects, part of Consumers Energy’s more than $1 billion investment to strengthen the electric grid.
To put things into perspective, Consumers Energy unveiled the following data from this year:
- 25,800 – Miles of overhead low-voltage power lines that were inspected.
- 7,000 – Miles of power lines where trees, limbs, and branches were cleared.
- 177,000 – Number of customers who avoided power outages due to inspections carried out by helicopter.
- 100 – Number of new ATRs (automatic transfer reclosers)
- 10 – Miles of overhead electric lines being buried to prevent outages due to severe weather and vegetation. Consumers Energy plans to bury some 35 miles of lines in 2025.
“We’re building an electric grid that stands up to even more severe weather helps ensure more reliable power for the people who count on us,” said Chris Laird, Consumers Energy’s vice president of electric distribution. “We’ll continue doing even more of this important work next year to reach our goal of restoring power to all customers, in all situations, in less than 24 hours.”
The Reliability Roadmap
Consumers Energy is Michigan’s largest energy provider, providing natural gas and/or electricity to 6.8 million of the state’s 10 million residents in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties. 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. 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 also recently announced that its use of infrared cameras reduced power outages for its nearly 2 million Michigan electric customers by an average of 10 minutes last year. The handheld infrared cameras detect problems inside nearly 1,100 large electric substations throughout Michigan and allow Consumers Energy to make repairs before they affect the public – another approach in the Reliability Roadmap.
The utility is also working to inspect a “record” amount of low-voltage electric lines in Michigan this year, with plans to cover 25,500 miles by the year’s end – more than the circumference of the Earth at the equator. 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.
Consumers Energy’s Reliability Roadmap also includes investments in forestry work and infrastructure upgrades, including 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 counterparts, 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.
