LANSING – The MPSC’s 2023 Annual Reportv highlights actions the Commission took after a round of ice and snow storms spanning February 22 to March 4 left more than 1 million Michiganders without electricity, some for more than a week, as crews worked to repair more than 13,000 downed wires reported just for the state’s two largest electric utilities, DTE Electric Co. and Consumers Energy Co.

The Commission held in-person town hall meetings in two hard-hit areas — Jackson and Dearborn — and another online via livestream. Frustrated customers brought concerns and complaints about outages, unreliable service, troubles with reporting outages and getting accurate information about service restoration times, and more.

The MPSC in 2023 took multiple significant steps to address the power grid’s continuing challenges, including:

  • Launching a comprehensive, third-party audit of the equipment and operations of the electric distribution systems of DTE Electric and Consumers Energy, a first-of-its-kind effort to better understand challenges facing the electric grid and identify improvements needed to reduce the number and duration of outages and the risk of public contact with downed lines. A final report is expected in Case No. U-21305 in late summer 2024.
  • Updating the Commission’s Service Quality and Reliability Standards for Electric Distribution Systems, Technical Standards for Electric Service, and the Consumer Standards and Billing Practices for Electric and Natural Gas Service, which included increased customer power outage credits.
  • Establishing new Distribution System Reliability webpages to provide more detailed reliability and outage information for customers than had been publicly available before.
  • Implementing new reliability reporting requirements in MPSC Case No. U-21122 so that utilities now must provide monthly reliability data broken down by circuit. DTE Electric and Consumers Energy also must report reliability data by zip code and census tract.
  • Hosting a  technical conference in March to tackle issues affecting the 4.8 kilovolt (kV) electric system in the Detroit area, including the Detroit Public Lighting Department’s arc wire system, and opportunities, benefits, challenges, and alternatives to the 4.8 kV hardening program. The Commission also hosted a two-day resilience technical conference on May 22 and May 26, examining the interconnectedness of resilience and critical infrastructure, customer communications, resilience challenges, identification of data gaps and potential solutions, the future of resilience, unique challenges faced by vulnerable customers, funding opportunities, and enhanced coordination between utilities and local governments.
  • Issuing directives in Case No. U-21388 following the resilience technical conference aimed at improving communication protocols between utilities and local governments during outages and extreme weather events, improving customer communication protocols and accuracy of information provided to customers during outage events, and drafting revisions to service quality rules and technical standards to include requirements for resilience of critical facilities
  • Seeking input on a straw proposal to establish financial penalties for utilities whose customers experience repeated, lengthy power outages and incentives for improvements as part of the Commission’s MI Power Grid Financial Incentives and Disincentives workgroup (Case No. U-21400). A Staff report outlining the workgroup’s findings is expected in 2024.The annual report, which must be filed the first Monday of March each year, also recaps accomplishments in many other important areas of the MPSC’s work.