An Alpena utility company is asking the state to avoid paying its customers outage credits that accumulated during the northern Michigan ice storm.
The Alpena Power Company filed a petition with the Michigan Public Service Commission, requesting the state board waive customer credits that are required to be granted if a utility fails to restore service within 96 hours.
It reportedly took the company 11 days to restore power across its four-county service area in northeast Michigan, which includes Alpena, Presque Isle, Montmorency and Alcona counties.
The petition says the ice storm resulted in roughly 97 million outage minutes for the company's customers. It says reimbursing customers with credits would cost up to $1.5 million dollars, which represents about 6% of the company's total common equity.
The petition cites that state law allows for utilities to request exemptions when the cause is an "act of God," which is defined as an event with "extraordinary natural causes so exceptionally unanticipated and devoid of human agency that reasonable care would not avoid the consequences.”
It also says allowing the outage credits would present an unfair economic burden on the company, stating the utility could not have prevented the "major system failure" caused by the storm.
The utility company's lawyer, who drafted the petition, did not respond to WCMU's request for comment.
