DTE Energy has "extensive backlog" of inspections, new audit finds
(CBS DETROIT) - A recent audit from the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) takes a look at the reliability of Michigan's utility companies, and what it found was a laundry list of improvements that DTE Energy and Consumers Energy need to address.
"Several storm investigations have been initiated by the commission over the years, resulting in increased scrutiny and reporting, but to be candid, we haven't seen the improvement in reliability in safety and performance that customers expect and deserve," said Dan Scripps, chairman of the Michigan Public Service Commission.
The commission enlisted an outside consulting firm to conduct the review of the two utilities.
For Consumers Energy, the audit found that the company's response times to downed power lines are "poor" and that the company needs to do a better job communicating with consumers when there are outages.
For DTE, the audit found an "extensive backlog" of inspections for things like transformers and "substantial operational and safety issues with manhole covers." Additionally, the audit found that DTE is not doing well at getting downed power lines safely away from the public quickly after storms.
For Kamau Jawara, who attended Thursday's meeting, the audit left things out.
"This was an audit that was looking into reliability but not looking into affordability," Jawara said. "Many of us are feeling the weight of increasing utility bills, cost of living, and also currently folks can't afford to pay more, so we really do need to look at, particularly DTE's spending habits."
Jawara says it's been very frustrating to read reports of DTE officials using private jets while the service remains unreliable.
"We need to ask that question of why are they asking us for that money and not using their record-breaking profits?" Jawara said.
Mara Matta, another meeting attendee, said she's focused on affordability, too, but from a health perspective. In a power outage, she said, Michigan residents can't refrigerate medicine as needed, which makes refrigerated food unsafe to eat and can impact hospital systems.
"Even if — big if — we had a reliable grid, making our grid unaffordable functions like an outage and causes these negative health outcomes that are so negative they're impacting our life expectancy," she said.
DTE and Consumers Energy must now file responses to the audit by the middle of November.