Keeping Power On: More Than Poles and Wires

As of: 2:47 AM, 4/28/24

What It Takes to Keep Your Power On

The goal is simple – fewer, shorter power outages across the state for our 1.9 million electric customers. In 2021, our statewide average system reliability was 99.95% across more than 90,000 miles and 1,200 substations.

Since there are a variety of power outage causes, we will never be completely without them. Just like anything else you use to power your life (like your home, car, or appliances), with the passage of time, maintenance and upgrades are required. So, we will always need to take planned outages for maintenance and repairs.

Then there will always be things we cannot control, like nature, that create unplanned outages. We are working to mitigate the impact of trees, wildlife, and weather to reduce the number of outages and time it takes to restore power. Since the inter-connected electric grid is bigger than Michigan, weather (extreme temperatures, high winds, and storms) in recent years is having a big impact. For example, during the last four-years, our state has seen wind-speed averages twice as high as any similar period in the last 20 years.

As the largest energy provider in Michigan, we are preparing for growth – serving more customers and more electronic devices. How many more electric powered gadgets do you own today than 10 or 20 years ago? Technology growth affects how customers use energy. Powering modern technology means preparing to provide more energy, increasing our capacity to avoid outages and overloads. Not only are we preparing for everyone to need more power, we are also preparing to serve more customers to support growth in Michigan’s communities and economic development – including the automotive industry.

As electric vehicles become more affordable and incentivized for residents and businesses, we are prepared to support this transition by strategically installing charging stations and joining Michiganders by transitioning our fleet. By 2030, our fleet light duty vehicle purchases will be 100% electric, along with 30% of our entire fleet. We are on the road by 2030 to power 1 million electric vehicles – including supporting school buses now.

With all that in mind, our goal is not only to serve today, but to create a more stable system for decades to come. We recently filed a 5-year plan, the Reliability Roadmap, with the Michigan Public Service Commission that represents our blueprint to strengthen Michigan’s electric grid with new long-term goals. To provide maximum energy value for every customer dollar, we carefully consider every investment in our system to ensure it produces effective, efficient results for all customers. Our plan invests nearly $9 billion in Michigan to support the goal of ensuring no customer ever goes more than 24 hours without power. We will also be working towards no single outage affecting more than 100,000 customers. With continued investment, technological advances and support from regulators and key stakeholders, our plan can dramatically transform how we serve our customers.

We are already strategically investing in outage prevention systems to provide reliable, clean and affordable electricity through infrastructure upgrades, smart grid technology and more. Many new technologies to modernize the power grid enable automatic restoration or avoidance of outages, which we call “self-healing.” This self-healing distribution system with remote technology will act as our eyes and ears on the grid. With thousands of points across thousands of miles of electrical lines, we can detect problems quickly and pinpoint which areas have outages. Then, when possible, energy is rerouted to efficiently restore your service until repairs can be made. In 2023, our smart technology investments positively contributed to shorter and fewer power outages with more than 280,000 outage hours avoided. While prioritizing areas most in need of attention, proactive electric service projects reduced outages for more than 1 million customers in 2022. To modernize the electric distribution system and minimize interruptions more effectively, we are installing equipment that will help us monitor, isolate and automatically respond such as:

Computers and mobile communications continue to allow our team to collaborate with each other and communities more effectively than ever before. The accessibility of information contributes to smoother planning, quicker adjustments when needed, and increased safety.
Data and modeling technology enable us to respond faster and better prepare for the grid we will need in the future. With the help of many new smart tools, we are capturing better data and new imaging on electrical system performance and weather for today’s work and future planning. These tools help us catch and repair equipment before an outage. Our weather model, for example, uses more than 25 million weather observations from across Michigan’s Lower Peninsula to develop the probability and frequency of an outage.
The Outage Map uses automated data-driven estimates to communicate with millions of people about power restoration. This is especially helpful when the map may report that your power is restored, when in actuality it is not because of a secondary issue in the area. In cases like these, by reporting your continued outage on this tool, secondary issues are addressed more quickly.
Smart Meters sending real-time, remote reads with their digital displays have changed meter reading for the better. Smart Meters support your ability to understand real-time energy use to save money and reduce energy waste. They also reduce the frequency of us having to step on your property.
Automatic Transfer Reclosers (ATRs) are programmed to detect power loss and reroute power from another source to automatically restore as many customers as possible. Prior to ATRs, customers might have been without power for hours or days. Now with ATRs, some customers will never even have an outage, while others will be automatically restored in minutes or even seconds. Each ATR has been strategically placed on circuits that will maximize customer benefit, including those most impacted by outages. We now have ATRs on more than 10% of our electric system. In 2023, ATRs prevented more than 58,000 customers from experiencing an outage. As a result of this success, we have $15 million budgeted annually for ATR installations.
Sectionalizing devices and air break switches are being upgraded and we are adding more to keep the interrupted flow of energy to a limited area, which reduces the number of people experiencing an outage.
Line Sensors map where circuits are down to help our crews identify areas in need of repair more quickly, resulting in power being restored faster.
Aerial patrolling with drones and helicopters help our crews perform inspections on our electrical systems to find areas in need of repair and tree trimming maintenance more quickly – preventing outages. In the past, it could take days to locate an issue with employees having to walk through some rough terrain. Now, we can safely identify an issue in minutes and more quickly coordinate crews to fix top priority situations.
Robotic substation inspector, Spot the ‘Dog’ can be used on an autonomous, programmed schedule or manually to inspect critical equipment to identify problems before they happen. This proactive effort helps our crews repair under safer conditions. Robots like Spot can help us collect consistent and routine data to monitor thousands of pieces of equipment all over the state. While Spot is really fascinating to watch, be sure to follow posted signs, respect protective barriers and never enter a substation. Love robotic animals? Check out our natural gas smart pigs which have been inspecting pipelines for decades.
Utility-scale batteries for backup power supply in the event of an outage or for renewable energy sources like solar. We are also using transportable batteries to minimize outages while crews replace equipment.

Infrastructure upgrades and investments are happening on more than just smart technology tools, and sometimes you may not see the work that is positively impacting the reliability of the services you use. For example, our Grand Rapids area reliability work helps power new 5G cell phone towers for mobile phone and internet service to the entire state. As upgrading equipment is a continuous process and industry standards evolve with time, we are committing more resources to proactive maintenance to keep the electric grid working properly. When we perform repairs and build to expand to new areas, we are installing more durable industry materials. We follow existing equipment routes where possible, allowing us to upgrade other equipment at the same time. In some instances, we may move structures to a more favorable location to reduce community and environmental impacts, improve safety and to reduce customer costs. Since moving to new, more resilient equipment increases reliability, several hundred state-wide projects are already scheduled or underway. These projects in our ever-expanding system made up of high-voltage distribution (HVD) and low-voltage distribution (LVD) components, include:

Planting new trees and vegetation, as part of our commitment to replenishing trees, in partnership with the Michigan Forestry and Park Association, we have provided municipalities grant funding to plant the right tree in the right place.
Existing trees and vegetation must meet our tree and vegetation clearing standards, which are in line with industry regulations and safety standards, company best practices and follow Michigan Public Service Commission requirements. As a result of fallen trees or broken limbs being the leading cause of outages, we have increased investment in forestry by more than 60% since 2018. As of 2023, over half our lines are on an established tree trimming cycle, which varies between 5-10 years depending on voltage, and we are aiming to add all lines to these established schedules. In 2022, we trimmed vegetation along more miles of lines than ever before, clearing tree branches from 7,100 miles of electric lines (that is about twice the width of the United States!).
Newer poles have improved durability to withstand winds at over 100 miles per hour. In 2022, we replaced 10,000 poles and we are now continuing to accelerate the replacement of poles.
Electric line cables and circuits are being reorganized during their upgrades to support new lines for community growth and as part of the 1,000 miles of line being replaced annually with thicker wire. These upgrades support increasing how much electricity can be carried and the interconnection of the grid. This reduces outages through tying lines to additional circuits to source power from one another in an outage.
Substantial substation improvements with years of planning, may result in upgrades or even redesigning and rebuilding to support growth expansion, improve the flow of energy and detect issues before they occur. New equipment allows substations to shift the energy load needed to avoid an outage to a different transformer at another substation. In 2022, nearly 100 substations were upgraded, rebuilt, or expanded. Due to around 8% of outages being caused by wildlife coming into accidental contact with lines and equipment, especially substations, we have been upgrading with the latest design measures (tighter mesh fencing, polycarbonate barriers and pole wraps) to deter animals from entering them. We are also increasing safety measures for our line crews by adding additional fuses to separate lines near substations and expanding protective zones by relocating the devices responsible for cutting power in an emergency.
Burying overhead lines underground protects lines from needing as many repairs due to recurring damage from weather, wildlife and humans. As it has become increasingly cost-effective, this leads to lower annual maintenance costs and reduced tree trimming expenses. We have been strategically undergrounding electric lines in areas that would receive the greatest benefit. When applicable, maintenance can be coordinated with road repair activity to reduce excavation costs.
Preventative vehicle maintenance on nearly 8,000 units including vehicles, bucket trucks, trailers, air compressors, trenching machines, mini excavators, backhoes and amphibious machines to maximize the time that our workers can spend out in the field, especially during storms.
Standby storm response is a new approach where we now put crews on standby in areas we expect to be hit hardest before a storm starts. System control, dispatchers, wire guards, line workers and so many others have contributed to the process improvements that have led to restoration efforts occurring more quickly and safely.
Conservation voltage reduction (CVR) optimizes the distribution system and our energy use. By reducing voltage, we lower electricity consumption by our customers, cut carbon emissions and decrease the need to build new, large power plants.

We put years of thoughtful work into the transition of energy equipment and sources. With future use studies, we work closely with key stakeholders to retire equipment responsibly, repurpose where we can, and restore Michigan to protect the environment. We care for our communities and are committed to leaving it better than we found it.

Just like having a variety of food sources to provide enough energy to your body, we have a variety of electric generation sources. Our incremental and flexible transition to renewables is being done in phases to ensure our electric generation can meet our customers’ needs without overbuilding. Studies show the cost of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar have dropped significantly over the last decade – which supports affordability. Additionally, we purchase power from several in-state sources and participate in a multi-state, integrated energy market to help stabilize the electric grid. We competitively bid new electric generation supply to ensure the best value for our customers. With the peak demand day (hottest day of year) as our daily service goal, we are using software solutions to integrate, manage and coordinate electricity generated, including:

Hydroelectric generation is the original renewable energy and our Ludington Pumped Storage has played an important role in powering our lives. But as technology and renewables evolve, we may find that hydroelectric generation changes.
Wind generated energy creates not only clean energy, but also new opportunities, jobs and millions of dollars in economic benefits.
Utility-scale solar will comprise more than half our electric capacity by 2040 and we are partnering with residents, businesses, landowners, and wildlife to make it happen. Today’s solar plants are built for tough winters and increasingly cost-competitive.

Ultimately, the transition to resilient renewable energy is also in support of a healthier planet for Michiganders.

Another part of our reliability is our people, who are Michiganders too, and we do more than just keep the energy flowing. While considering care for the environment, our people ensure that access to energy is fair and equitable for everyone. This includes extra sensitivity to vulnerable communities that may have greater difficulty during power interruptions due to fewer alternative resources.

Our people are passionate about helping neighbors learn how to save energy and money, find financial assistance for energy bills, and on more than one occasion - save lives:

We have hundreds of hometowns and it is likely that someone you know proudly works as part of our collaborative team to keep the lights on. Our team is always working as quickly and safely as possible to minimize impacts to electric service and natural gas, including working on planned outages overnight. We are proud of the dedication found in all our employees as they work diligently behind the scenes, in advance where we can, and responding with a moment’s notice at all hours to weather impacts.

We are grateful to the team members and their loved ones for the hours or even days in potentially hazardous situations. We are grateful for the collaboration that keeps everyone safe and informed. We are grateful for the outages we never see.

We are grateful for you and the around-the-clock community effort to manage energy responsibly through:

Training and preparation, community business partners, mutual assistance utility crews, and first responders keep everyone safe and enable quicker restoration after storm.
Collaborations with government agencies also enable quicker restoration after storms and limit disruptions to communities through the coordination of cross functional projects (improving our infrastructure and roadway or civic improvements, simultaneously).
Your efforts towards understanding what is yours to maintain and how we must work together to use energy efficiently. Since waste reduction is a source of energy management – that is why we look to you for support in reducing your use, which supports our ability to make the grid resilient, reliable and efficient.

The proof is in the numbers that show all our combined efforts and continued investments in the grid are paying off. Planned outages for maintenance and upgrades when demand is low prevent longer, unplanned outages in the future. Our results prove that we are not only getting better at preventing outages, but also restoring power faster:

By the end of 2021, after evaluating all our electric lines and using years of data, we prioritized work to fix the circuits with the most significant outage history first. These upgraded circuits saw an average outage frequency reduction of more than 70% and contributed to preventing 35,000 outages.
After inspecting all our HVD system and more than half of our LVD system in 2022, over 2,000 electric projects (serving 1 million customers) reduced the number of outages by 20 percent with half as many outage minutes compared to 2021. More than 96 percent of customers impacted by outages in 2022 were restored in less than 24 hours.

And we are not just focused on our portion of Michigan’s electric grid, as one of the nation’s largest natural gas distribution companies, we are also investing millions towards more resilient materials and upgrades to our natural gas infrastructure. These natural gas reliability investments also support Michigan’s growth and contain opportunities to aid in affordability to our customers. For example, on average, we are paying 60% less for natural gas than a decade ago. Since you are only charged the amount we pay for the supply of natural gas, this means you are paying less too.

The time it takes to reach our goals will depend on several factors, including continued investment to strengthen the grid, technological advances and support from key stakeholders. Regulators will consider the critical infrastructure investments outlined in our plans incrementally over the course of many years. We appreciate your patience and support. We will continue to keep you informed about our progress along the way via direct mail, email and online.

With our standards for reliability changing for the better, our number one focus remains the same – doing what is right for our neighbors today and the generations to come. As Michigan’s largest energy provider of natural gas and/or electricity to 6.8 million of the state’s 10 million residents, in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties, there will always be areas to improve. We have been providing service and adapting to changes in the world for over 130 years, creating an electric grid that is built to last. Whether we are in the air, traveling the land above or underground, or on the water, know that you can count on us – the people of Consumers Energy.