Nessel reviews DTE request for alternate outage credit rules for customers without smart meters

Electric meters. | Sarah Vogelsong/States Newsroom

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has intervened on a recent request from DTE, in which the company is requesting a waiver to rules requiring electricity providers to automatically credit customers facing frequent or extended power outages.

The Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), which oversees energy companies within the state, issued updated Service Quality Rules in 2023, tightening timelines for companies to restore power to customers under various weather conditions, increasing the amount providers must pay customers impacted by outages, and requiring energy companies to provide those credits automatically. Customers were previously required to contact the utility in order to receive the outage credit.

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Under the most recent fee adjustment , customers are entitled to a $38 credit if they are out of power for more than 16 hours when less than 1% of their provider’s customers have an outage, 48 hours when between 1% and 10% of their provider’s customers are in an outage or 96 hours when 10% of more of a provider’s customers are without power. Once a consumer qualifies for the credit, they will receive an additional $38 a day until the outage is restored.

Customers who experience more than six interruptions in a 12-month period are also entitled to a $38 credit, with the number of interruptions resetting to zero once the credit is paid.

In its case before the MPSC, DTE requested a waiver to the outage credit requirements for customers whose homes are not equipped with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), or smart meters, which allow companies to monitor energy or gas consumption in real time. The company would instead require customers without smart meters to contact DTE’s customer service department via phone and request a reliability credit review, which would require the company to conduct a manual investigation to determine the duration of the outage.

Under DTE’s proposed alternative, the company would have 90 days to provide an outage credit beginning after the customer makes their initial service request, rather than within 90 days of restoring service.

According to testimony submitted to the MPSC , DTE services about 13,000 customers who have opted out of advanced metering infrastructure.

“The company’s ability to automatically provide a bill credit to AMI opt-out customers is not technologically feasible within the prescribed 90 days because of the lack of requisite outage data generated by non-transmitting meters,” its testimony reads.

It continues: “Although the rules do not distinguish AMI and AMI opt-out customers, the AMI-derived meter data required to identify instantaneous outage data and automatically determine bill credit eligibility does not exist for AMI opt-out customers. Thus, the Company’s ability to automatically identify customers who are eligible for a duration or frequency bill credit under the Rules is not technologically feasible due to not having the ability to automatically retrieve data.”

DTE also argues that developing a system to identify customers who have opted out of smart metering as eligible for outage credits would subject the company to an undue economic burden, noting its current solution is advanced metering infrastructure data, which is not available to these customers.

In a Tuesday news release, Nessel criticized the company’s request as a bid to avoid public accountability.

“DTE is asking to be excused from complying with the State’s outage credit rules, put in place to hold utilities accountable for their performance and to compensate their bill-paying customers when their lights go out. DTE has an obligation to provide reliable service to all its customers, regardless of whether they have smart meters or not,” Nessel said.

“DTE’s desire to erode public accountability measures is unsurprising, but it is an overreach to seek to be permanently excused from complying with the outage credit mandate. As always, my team will be carefully scrutinizing this request,” she said.

In an emailed statement, DTE spokesperson Ryan Lowry emphasized the company had not requested an exemption from paying outage credits to customers.

“DTE remains committed to providing outage credits to all qualifying customers. This happens automatically for the more than two million customers with advanced metering infrastructure, or smart meter technology. Approximately 13,000 customers have opted-out of smart meters and continue to use legacy meters, which have technology limitations that prevent the meter from communicating outage information and DTE from proactively issuing a credit,” Lowry said.

“The company has requested that these legacy meter customers proactively submit a credit request to help ensure their outage credit is captured and processed,” Lowry said.

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