Michigan law, as part of the MI Healthy Climate Plan, is requiring power companies to switch to a cleaner generation of energy to reduce climate change impacts. The utilities are working on that, but they’re also facing the realities of climate change today that are causing power outages.

The regulatory agency that is responsible for Michigan’s big utility companies is pushing companies such as DTE Energy and Consumers Energy to serve customers more reliably.

“We have too many outages, they last too long, there are too many customers who see repeated outages over the course of the year,” said Dan Scripps, Chair of the Michigan Public Service Commission.

Lester Graham

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Michigan Public

“You know, we’ve been near the bottom for a number of years in terms of particularly the duration of outages and the number of customers who experience repeated outages once a month. And those are the places where we’ve really tried to focus our attention, including tying how utilities earn their money with penalties and incentives to making sure that they’re delivering increasing levels of reliability to their customers,” Scripps explained.

But with a number of issues causing the frequency and length of outages, where do you even start?

Tree trimming.

The utilities and regulators we spoke with all listed it as a priority.

“We are starting to see a real focus on tree trimming. That’s an important piece. It’s still where the low-hanging fruit is,” Scripps said.

It’s also really unpopular with folks who don’t like losing a tree or as some view it: seeing their tree butchered.

But with more intense storms fueled by climate change, it’s a logical place to start. Falling branches or uprooted trees are a frequent reason power lines are knocked out of commission.

Lester Graham

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Michigan Public

“We’ve definitely seen a 20 year trend of increasingly severe weather, worse winds. This year we had our first tornadoes in February. And we’re taking steps throughout our 90,000 miles of distribution grid,” said Greg Salisbury, Consumers Energy’s Vice President for Electric Distribution Engineering.

Consumers is trimming trees along 7,000 miles of power line each year.

DTE Electric said about 50% of the time that people lose power, it’s due to trees.

The company said it’s increasing the number of miles of tree trimming near its power lines each year with about 6,000 miles expected this year.

And it’s not just the two big investor-owned utilities, DTE and Consumers. The rural cooperatives and municipal utilities are also seeing more outages. They’re not regulated by the Michigan Public Service Commission, but by the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.

Julie Staveland is Assistant Division Director for the Materials Management Division of EGLE. She said tree trimming is a start.

“Preventing some of those branches hitting the lines and also reinforcing the poles. We have poles in some of these places that have been up since like the 1920s.”

With part of the electric grid a century old, Staveland said newer power and bigger power poles are needed to replace the old ones.

Since much of the grid is made up of wood and wires, even those that are not as old need to be replaced because some of the existing poles were smaller and not sturdy enough to stand up to the wind and ice we’re seeing.

There are seven sizes of wooden power poles. When poles fail, the utilities are replacing old poles with ones that are two sizes larger.

Some might even be replaced with steel.

They’re also looking at the cross members at the top of the poles, opting for materials that are stronger and longer-lasting than wood.

Another big change to help prevent long periods of power outages is more automation. People at the operations centers of some of the utilities can turn off or re-route power. For instance, if a tree limb knocks out power, but then the limb falls to the ground, but the power line is still intact, they can try to turn power back on from headquarters.

“So now instead of waiting for a crew to go drive 40 or 50 miles to look at an entire circuit, we get an instantaneous reset,” said Greg Salisbury at Consumers Energy.

Lester Graham

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Michigan Public

Another example of automation: DTE’s Vice President of Electric Distribution Operations and Emergency Preparedness, Brian Calka, said if power goes out in one of that company’s service areas, it can reroute power from the operations center.

“So, if I know I have an outage in one location, I can open and close devices nearby to re-route power to get the lights turned back on for those customers much sooner than you otherwise would.”

There was supposed to be some federal money to help expand, upgrade, and make the U.S. power grid more resilient and more reliable.

That money is part of the Infrastructure and Investment in Jobs Act. The Trump administration has “paused spending” on that money approved by Congress.

Editor’s note: DTE and Consumers Energy are among Michigan Public’s corporate sponsors.