Consumers Energy figures for 2023 show grid upgrades yielded swifter power restoration
Crediting grid upgrades over recent years, Consumers Energy recently announced that it managed to restore power to nearly 90 percent of customers who lost power in 2023 within 24 hours.
“We are trimming trees, using technology and burying more power lines to build a power grid that is reliable in all weather,” Greg Salisbury, Consumers Energy’s vice president of electric distribution engineering, said. “We all saw the threat from severe weather, in the form of intense back-to-back storms just last month, where we restored power to most customers in less than 24 hours, which makes us even more determined to make outages as infrequent and as short as possible.”
More work is scheduled for this year, as part of the company’s ongoing Reliability Roadmap – a long-term plan to improve reliability throughout Michigan. As to last year, Consumers added that it managed to reduce the length of the average customer outage during normal weather to less than three hours, thanks to a 20 minute improvement for its nearly 2 million customers against the average of the previous five years.
To date, the company has instituted 150 major upgrades throughout Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, upgraded, rebuilt or expanded more than 100 substations, added smart technology extensively and begun strategically burying electric lines. For this year, Consumers’ investments will be aided by a $100 million federal commitment to its roadmap.
