$2 Million in Savings for Consumers Energy Electric Customers

LANSING – Last week, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) decided that Consumers Energy Company cannot charge electric customers for some of the energy replacement costs incurred by the Company due to its unreasonable and imprudent actions.

Consumers sought $338,067 to compensate itself for the costs incurred to provide electricity when it suffered an outage at one of its generation plants due to the company’s own unreasonable and imprudent practices. A larger amount was also sought by the company in the same case, for $1.77 million. The company withdrew the larger amount after the Attorney General and MPSC Staff filed testimony challenging the recovery of replacement power cost due to errors caused by its contractor.  As a result of the Attorney General and MPSC Staff litigation in this case and final order by the Michigan Public Service Commission Consumers’ electric customers saved approximately $2.1 million.

In March of 2022, Consumers Energy Company filed an application to recoup power supply costs it expended to provide electricity in 2021. The Attorney General and MPSC staff filed testimony challenging the recovery of replacement power cost due to errors caused by its contractor.

“Ratepayers in Michigan shouldn’t bear the burden of mismanagement or poor decision making of the company, and I’m glad the commission agreed with our argument,” said Nessel.

Another issue raised by the Attorney General related to the lack of information for outages at the Company’s solar and renewable energy facilities. The company did not provide any outage information regarding its renewable energy facilities, and as such no public party has been able to evaluate the existence or nature of outages at those facilities to determine whether they were necessary or caused by unreasonable and imprudent actions by the company. The Attorney General recommended that the MPSC require the company to provide outage information for wind and solar facilities like they provide for other generation plants.

“On behalf of Michigan electricity consumers, we’re winning more transparency from our utility corporations by our advocacy in these commission filings,” Nessel continued. “We will continue to advocate in all utility cases in the state to deliver a transparent and fair process and product for ratepaying Michigan residents that support these utility corporations with no other options to shop from.”

The company disagreed with the Attorney General’s recommendations for outage reporting for wind and solar facilities. In response to the Attorney General’s recommendations, it proposed providing other outage related information for wind generation, but not solar due to their relatively small amount of solar generation. The MPSC ordered the utility company to provide notice of outages as it proposed along with other details for their wind generation facilities but allowed the company to continue not reporting outage data on its solar operations.

Since taking office, the Attorney General has saved Michigan consumers over $2.4 billion by intervening in utility cases before the MPSC.

Consumers Energy provides electricity to approximately 1.9 million customers throughout Michigan and natural gas to 1.8 million customers across the state.