Some Michigan House lawmakers are responding to this winter’s widespread blackouts with a new task force.
The “Energy Reliability, Resilience and Accountability Task Force” is planning a statewide listening tour this summer. Its chair, Democratic Representative Helena Scott, says new bills will come from the feedback it gathers.
She says utilities need the nudge to ensure blackouts don’t keep happening, while the Michigan Public Service Commission would welcome the help.
“It doesn’t look like they’ve made any changes to date right? And so, that’s the purpose of the task force. MPSC also said that the legislators need to implement change and they would follow it. And so that’s what we’re going to do.” said Scott.
DTE Energy, one of the companies involved in this winter’s outages, says it already has a plan to transform the electric grid through updates and tree trimming.