Up to two-tenths of ice coated trees Monday in central Oakland County and parts of Macomb County, said Steve Freitag, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in White Lake. Many of them are from other states and have been battling Mother Nature and Father Time for days as they race against the clock in frozen rain to make the most difficult repairs yet, utility executives have said. Nessel also took the companies to task by saying that, despite the utilities' frequent requests for higher rates, and their promises to improve, they have "failed to adequately invest in their own infrastructure or prepare for these storm events, choosing instead to leave ratepayers in the dark."īad weather set back efforts Monday and is hampering the efforts of thousands of exhausted line workers. Without electricity, most homes also do not have heat or hot water. The burden is heaviest on families with young children and the elderly. Still, some customers have said that $35 is still inadequate, considering how much was lost in spoiled food, and in some cases, the hundreds of dollars it costs to stay in a hotel for several days. More: Ohio train derailment wastes no longer coming to Michigan - but hazardous waste still flows into state More: More bad weather for Michigan sets back repairs, adds more outages The utility said in a statement: "Customers should note that it may take one to two billing cycles for the credit to appear on their bill." That's $10 more than the usual state-set $25 per customer for outages.ĭTE said it would do so for this batch of outages and customers who are out of power for 96 consecutive hours would not have to apply for the credit. The numbers for both companies fluctuated as as some had power restored, while ice from a milder storm on Monday took out tens of thousands more.įor customers, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has called on DTE and Consumers Energy to start routinely issuing $35 credits when customers lose power for extended periods. "We appreciate people’s patience and understanding while we expect crews to make progress on a clear day today."īy 7 a.m., DTE's and Consumer Energy's outage centers showed there were about 51,000 and nearly 74,000 customers with out power. "Our commitment to our customers is nothing less than all hands on deck," Jeff Shingler, one of Consumers Energy’s executives said at 6 a.m. The good news is Tuesday's forecast calls for highs in the 40s, winds of 15-20 mph, maybe some snow flurries in the morning, but an otherwise dry day, which would benefit Michigan's two biggest utilities - DTE and Consumers - as they make their push to repair most of the remaining lines to Michiganders in the dark. Credit can be applied for here.As of early Tuesday morning, nearly a 125,000 utility customers in Michigan were waiting for their lights - and heat - to be restored. The same condition apply for Consumers Energy. Eight or more outages during a 12-month period.A power outage of more than 16 hours during non-catastrophic conditions.An outage of more than 120 hours under catastrophic conditions, which counts for an official state of emergency or an interruption of more than 10% of a utility's customers.In most cases, will provide customers with a $25 credit if customers experiencined one of the following: STORM COVERAGE: DTE Outages in Southeast Michigan: 61,000+ still without power Typically, customers have to apply for credit.ĭTE and Consumers Energy both have reimbursement programs that under the right circumstances will enable customers to get money for their outage period. In this case, customers who did not have power for 96 hours or more will get a $25 credit automatically. Last week's incident was so severe that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel called on the affected utilities to "proactively" issue credit for outages. In Michigan, where 700,000 homes experienced some kind of outage, there were also public safety concerns from downed wires electrocuting unsuspecting victims. There were fewer than 10,000 outages in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio. In Illinois, the number of homes that lost power was in the tens of thousands. RELATED: More winter weather targeting Metro Detroit Another 200,000 homes that are serviced by Consumers Energy also lost power. More than 500,000 homes in just Southeast Michigan alone lost power, according to DTE's outage map from last week. There may be a renewed push for legislation addressing Michigan's outage issues, which dwarfed nearby states in the volume of homes that lost power.
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