Nessel pushes back on Upper Peninsula Power Company’s request for outage credit waivers

Attorney General Dana Nessel | Screenshot

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has intervened in a case with the Michigan Public Service commission after the Upper Peninsula Power Company requested a permanent waiver in how it counts outages.

The Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) — which regulates electrical utilities within the State — updated its service quality rules last year. Customers who experience six or more outages within 12 months are entitled to a $38 outage credit. The updated rules require companies to track the number of outages and provide an automatic credit, where customers were previously required to apply for it.

As part of its request to the MPSC , Upper Peninsula Power Company asked for a permanent waiver of one of the rules related to repeated interruptions in power. During catastrophic conditions, it asked the MPSC to allow the company to report a single sustained outage even if service was restored and lost multiple times, citing the rural and heavily wooded nature of its coverage area.

The company supplies electricity in Alger, Baraga, Delta, Houghton, Keweenaw, Marquette, Menominee, Ontonagon, Schoolcraft and Iron counties.

Catastrophic conditions are defined as events where 10% or more of an electrical utility’s customers are without power, or there has been an emergency government declaration. In a statement, Nessel argued that Upper Peninsula Power Company’s request is “unreasonable and unnecessary.”

“[Upper Peninsula Power Company’s] outage credit waiver request could potentially skirt and undermine the amended service quality rules set in place just last year; rules that my office advocated zealously to improve,” Nessel said.

“My team will be carefully examining this request to side-step the Commission’s new rules, but [Upper Peninsula Power Co.’s] insistence on a permanent waiver is already troubling. We will continue to fight for customer-friendly rules and challenge unreasonable waiver requests,” Nessel said.

The company also requested a waiver on another portion of the rules for repetitive interruptions that requires companies to reset an individual’s interruption counter to zero after a credit has been issued, to ensure they receive another credit should they experience seven or more additional outages in a 12-month period.

Upper Peninsula Power Company said its current software does not allow for it to reset individual’s sustained interruption counters, and asked to track all of a customer’s outages over a 12-month period and award multiple credits to customers who experience more than six sustained interruptions during the single 12-month period as it resets all customer’s counters.

In its waiver request, the company said compliance with both rules would be “at this time technologically infeasible and/or resource-intensive and economically burdensome.”

Brett French, the company’s vice president of business development and communications did not respond to a request for comment.

Nessel’s office encouraged Upper Peninsula Power Co. customers to submit their own thoughts on the matter through the MPSC’s docket page for the case at Docket U-21586 .

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