State regulators have approved a 2.8% bump in electricity bills for customers of Consumers Energy, beginning on April 4.
The Michigan Public Service Commission said its order for the total $153.8 million increase in revenue for the company represented a more than 52% reduction in what Consumers had originally requested, and that the most of the money would be spent on tree-trimming to reduce power outages, as well as other technologies to improve grid reliability.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who filed in the rate case, said she is pleased the rate hike request was cut in half, but “only 12 months since their last rate hike was approved, Consumers Energy customers are facing yet another rate hike in what has become a never-ending cycle."
Regulated utilities "keep coming back to the trough, and over and over again Michiganders are forced to pay higher and higher bills just to keep the lights on," said Nessel.
Amy Bandyk of the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan, a utility watchdog group, said the focus on increased tree-trimming is a start, but the order doesn't go far enough. She said the MPSC agreed that Consumers should move to a 4 year tree-trimming schedule.
"However, the fact that the utility has still not proposed shifting to a 4-year cycle despite its own analyses supporting such a shift should have been a reason to hold them accountable with a smaller rate increase than was approved today," Bandyk said.
She said it could take over a year for the utility to study the issyue, propose changes in its next rate case, and then eventually implement the changes.
"Consumers Energy customers should not have to wait years for their utility to follow basic industry standards on tree trimming, one of the most effective ways of preventing outages," said Bandyk.
A group of Clean Energy Organization intervenors said they were pleased that the Commission's order continued to push the utility to identify and address reliability disparities in environmental justice communities, usually in lower-income areas of the state. Those communities tend to have large minority populations and poorer histories of investment in infrastructure and reliability.
Consumers Energy said the spending approved by the order will support its Reliability Roadmap.
“We plan to roll up our sleeves and accelerate building the electric grid for the next generation,” said Greg Salisbury, Consumers Energy’s vice president of electric grid design. “We want our neighbors to know we will be working every day to make our system more reliable and more resilient to keep the lights on, even after the worst storms.”
The utility said it will clear trees along 8,000 miles of lines this year, and create a modern, stronger, and more resilient power grid in other ways, including infrastructure upgrades, and more technology technology investments to detect and respond more quickly to power outages.
“We know our customers are counting on us to deliver energy more reliably. Today’s plan approval gives us more resources to do important work that affects people directly,” said Chris Laird, Consumers Energy’s vice president of electric operations.
Consumers Energy is one of Michigan Public's corporate sponsors.
