New Report ranks Michigan amongst the worst in the country for utility performance

Do you ever wonder about the costs your utilities, especially gas and electric? Does your power go out regularly, especially during severe weather? Also, does it take a long time for you to get power back once you lost it?

These are all important questions, since most of us do not generate our own power and we rely on companies like Consumers Energy and DTE. 

In a new report from Citizen’s Utility Board, Michigan ranks as one of the worst states in the country around utility performance. The 2024 edition of CUB’s annual Utility Performance Report is out now, and once again it uses federal data on key metrics for gas and electric utilities to compare the performance of Michigan utilities to those in all other states in the three categories of reliability, affordability and environmental impacts.

One major finding from the report is: 

A recurring theme across different versions of this report, reinforced by the latest data, is that Michigan utilities have continually failed to improve their basic reliability performance, a weakness that is likely to be magnified during severe weather, which experts expect will be more common as the climate continues to warm.

Other important findings on Michigan utilities are: 

• Average time to restore power following an outage: 49th (and last in the Midwest) Duration of outages per customer: 43rd (and last in the Midwest) 
• Energy Expenditures per Household as % of Median Income: 38th (and last in the Midwest) 
• Cost of Electricity in the Residential Sector: 41st (and last in the Midwest) 
• Clean Generation as % of Total Generation: 34th 
• CO2 Emissions Intensity (kilograms per megawatt-hour of electricity generated): 36th

To read the full report, go here.

Another excellent resource for people is The Electric Utility Toolkit: An Activist’s Guide to Changing the Power Grid, a resource developed by the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Another way to take action is by joining the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition by heading to the Michigan Public Service Commission hearing on December 19th, 2024. MEJC staff and community members will be driving up together in one bus to attend the MPSC meeting, leave a comment and hand out energy democracy goodie bags! Please meet at the MEJC office, 2701 Bagley St, by 11:00am. We’ll head to Lansing and be at 7109 W. Saginaw Highway, Lansing, Michigan, 4891. We should be back at the office no later than 4:00pm. Lunch will be provided! You can register here.

Lastly, if you are interested in working on utility justice matters here in Grand Rapids, then contact the Urban Core Collective, specifically their Climate Justice team, which does work on utility costs and utility performance issues locally and at the state level. Contact the Climate Justice team members at this link.