Power outages in Livingston County remain but are well below ice storm peak

Livingston Daily
·2 min read

DETROIT - DTE Energy is reporting 2,298 customers remain without power in Livingston County Tuesday morning - five days after an ice storm raked southern Michigan with rain, sleet and snow, while Attorney General Dana Nessel calls on utility companies to proactively offer credits to customers.

“While this ice storm appears to have been one of the worst we have seen in many years, winter weather is an expected occurrence in Michigan. Residents deserve a grid they can rely on,” Nessel said in a press release. “Despite asking for record 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.”

Overall, 49,500 DTE customers remain without service. Initially, the utility reported more than 600,000 customers without power including nearly 18,000 in Livingston County.

"While more than 95% of customers impacted by the storm have been restored, crews will continue working around the clock to restore the remaining storm-impacted customers, as well as all other customers that have experienced recent outages," DTE said in a Monday tweet.

The company said more than 4,000 workers were in the field working on power restoration.

DTE Vice President Ryan Stowe said in a video that customers who were without power for more than 96 hours in what he called the largest ice storm in the company's history will get a $35 credit applied to their account. Typically, it's a $25 credit.

Stowe said the company will look at which meters were out of service to determine who gets the credits. Typically, customers who qualify for credits must apply for them.

The utility company said Tuesday there were still 253 separate outages affecting customers in Livingston County.

The area with the largest number of customers without service was east of Hyne/Hunter Road, south of Hyne Road and west of U.S. 23 where about 270 customers were without service.

An area stretching from Richardson Road to west of D-19 along Brighton and Triangle Lake roads also reported more than 160 customers without service.

A third area with about 170 customers without service encompasses an area centered on Richardson and Swarthout roads.

Consumers Energy outage map shows all customers in southwest Livingston County have had power restored.

Statewide, the company said about 73,000 customers - mostly south of Jackson and northeast of Grand Rapids - remain without power.

Nessel is also requesting that the Michigan Public Service Commission provide:

  • automatic credits for residents who lose power;

  • more substantial outage credits to help customers who incurred expenses for housing, food, etc; and,

  • the creation of metrics with penalties to ensure that the money spent on electric reliability results in increased reliability.

This article originally appeared on Livingston Daily: DTE Energy power outages affect nearly 3,000 in Livingston County