Consumers Energy Restores Power To Over 80 Percent

Image courtesy of Consumers Energy

Consumers Energy has restored power to over 80 percent of Michigan homes and businesses affected by this week’s historic storms. The all-hands-on-deck effort will continue and almost all restoration work should be complete by the end of the weekend.

“We are proud to say we’ve restored power to over 300,000 homes and business in less than four days,” said Guy Packard, Consumers Energy’s vice president for electric operations. “We know losing power is a hardship, so we remain grateful for the patience of our friends and neighbors as we make our final push to get the lights back on for everyone.”

More than 2,000 line workers, some from as far away as New York and Missouri, will continue to work 16-hour shifts to finish restoring power to all 370,000 homes and businesses that lost power since Tuesday night. This storm was one of the 10 most significant in company history.

Customers can check the progress crews are making to restore power by visiting www.ConsumersEnergy.com/OutageCenter. They can also sign up to get outage alerts and restoration times sent to a phone, email or text message — text ‘REG’ to 232273 or visit www.ConsumersEnergy.com/alerts.

Consumers Energy is offering these public safety tips:

If traffic lights are out, treat them as a four-way stop and use caution moving through intersections.
Be aware of possible downed wires. Report them to 9-1-1 or Consumers Energy at 800-477-5050 immediately while staying at least 25 feet away.
- If you’ve already reported a downed wire, we appreciate your patience as we work hard to safely secure the remaining incidents. More than 6,000 downed wires have been reported since Tuesday.
Be alert to crews working along roads. Drivers should slow down or stop and wait for oncoming traffic to clear so they safely can go past workers on roadsides.
Call 2-1-1 to connect with resources that offer assistance in your community, such as cooling centers or other needs. 2-1-1 is a free statewide service.
Never use a generator in an attached garage, basement, enclosed patio or near any air intakes. Doing so could cause a generator to produce hazardous levels of carbon monoxide, an odorless, colorless and deadly gas.
Consumers Energy will trim or remove trees interfering with electric restoration activities. Once safe to do so, clean-up of debris from tree trimming or removal during a storm emergency is the responsibility of individual property owners.
In some cases, the mast which holds the electric service wires to a customer’s home or business may have been damaged or torn away. Crews will reconnect the wires to a home, but only a licensed electrician can repair or replace a mast or a cable.