The money will pay for last-mile energy delivery to low-income residents and efforts to lessen the risk of severe weather damaging the power grid.
That won’t be nearly enough. There isn’t nothing more Pure Michigan ™ than potholes and power outages.
I’ve lived in a few different places in Michigan and power outages aren’t really that common and even when the weather is bad, it’s normally not down that long.
The worst I ever had was three days after a record ice storm that shut the area down for a few days. Other than that, never lost power for more than a few hours at most.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve had a power outage that lasted more than a minute or two in years, and I’ve lived all over the state
In Ann Arbor I’ve had at least 2 instances where my power was out for 3 or more days and a bunch of people were without power for over a week during the ice storm this year. Some of those folks lost power again for multiple days in subsequent storms.
That ice storm turned me into an advocate for municipal power. DTE is the worst and shouldn’t be allowed to pocket our tax dollars and raise rates while they let the grid fall apart
The ice storms this year were so bad in Ann Arbor that when DTE was announced as the sponsor of a musical I was in the orchestra for, the whole crowd booed.
I was out for 5 days last August. 😐
The article lists an awfully long laundry list of things the funding will go towards, including adding battery storage to the grid.
Is $21 million (15m federal, article says about 6m from state funds) anywhere close to realistic…? Or is this like “1 battery here, check that off the list, bury these 3 cables here and check that off the list…”
Close to realistic for what exactly?
Any meaningful grid changes/upgrades. It just seems like a very very small budget for infrastructure.
Grants aren’t meant to be a full budget, it’s intended to supplement additional spending.
