DTE desire consumers without smart meters to be responsible for reporting outages.
Michigan officials have intervened as DTE Energy attempt to change how some consumers get refunds after power outages.
DTE desire to erode public accountability measures in unsurprising but it is overreach to seek to bee permanently excused from complying with outage credit mandate.Nessel said.
Thanks to changes to service quality rules last year utility providers are responsible for issuing automatic credits to consumers who meet specific outage criteria
Consumers do not have contact provider to get their credit.
DTE Energy is attempting to change that method for customers whose homes are not equipped with smart meters. DTE argues that traditional electric meters require direct cosnumer action and make it difficult for company to track outages on its own.
DTE desire consumers who do not have smart meter to be required to call DTE if they believe an outage qualified for credit.
The 90 day deadline for credit would start at time the consumer reports the outage not at time of outage.
DTE is asking to be excused from complying with the states outage credit rules put in place to hold utilities accountable for performance and compensate their bill paying consumers when lights go out.
Michigan Attorney General Dan Nessel said “DTE has obligation to provide reliable service to all its consumers regardless of whether they have smart meters or not.
Nessel filed a notice of intervention last week in DTE Energy permanent waiver request which was made before Michigan Public Service Commission.
She has view that DTE is attempting to put burden back on consumers event though consumers are owed credit for loss of service for which they are paying.
DTE phrasing of outage credit as benefit to consumer additionally troubling as MPSC implemented the credits expressly to serve penalty of poor performing utility corporations.