Outage Credit

Residential and commercial and industrial customers will get an outage credit if they meet one of the following rules below:

• If you have lost power for more than 96 hours at the same time as 10% or more of our customers.
  
  
• If you have lost power for more than 48 hours at the same time as less than 10% of our customers.
  
  
• If you have lost power for more than 16 hours at the same time as less than 1% of our customers.
  
  
• If you have had six or more power outages lasting longer than five minutes within 12 months. Once you get the credit for the sixth outage, your outage count will restart at 0.
  
  
• Note: Partial loss of power will be looked into to see if it meets the requirements to be an outage credit. If it does, it will be as one of the event types listed above (catastrophic, gray sky, blue sky or sixth consecutive sustained outage).

For residential customers, you qualified for a $35 credit based on a power outage you had.

For commercial and industrial customers, you qualified for credit equal to one day’s worth of your monthly minimum bill amount based on a power outage you had.

Now, you don’t have to apply for an outage credit. Under new Michigan Public Service Commission rules, you will automatically get an outage credit if your power loss meets what is mentioned above.

A planned or scheduled outage means we’re doing fixes or upgrades to our equipment to give you better service. For credits, these outages follow the same rules as power outages during a normal time.

There are different causes of a power outage. The most likely causes of lost power are trees, equipment issues, or the weather. Other causes include animals, accidents, planned fixes or upgrades, or damage from digging. More information can be found on our Outage Center page.

Rules regarding outage credits apply to residential electric customers and commercial and industrial electric customers.

To find out if you have an outage credit, please look at your bill. On your bill the outage credit will appear as a line item in the center of your bill and/or as an outage credit billing adjustment under the payment section.

An outage credit will show up as a line item in the center of your bill and/or as an outage credit billing adjustment in the payment section of your bill.

After 90 days of your power coming back on, please contact customer service at 800-477-5050 to ask about your outage credit.

Yes, outage credits are only given to metered accounts.

We worked with the Michigan Public Service Commission to find out how customers can get their outage credits more easily. This led to us changing our process so that customers can get their outage credits automatically. The Michigan Public Service Commission made this a rule in 2023.

Outage credit rules are made by the Michigan Public Service Commission, which we follow. Under these rules, outage credits are given based on what’s listed at the beginning of this page.

If your food goes bad because of a power outage, you may be covered by your homeowner’s or renter’s insurance. Check with your insurance company for more information.

Remember as a customer you are only charged for the power you use. During a power outage, power is not used, so you will not be charged then.