- Those at Consumers Energy have had their eyes on this week's storm for about a week.
- Tracy Wimmer explains that this ultimately means preparedness on their end.
- There are several pieces of technology being utilized to prevent outages, or to decrease the amount of time someone is in an outage.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
While Tuesday's winter weather was mild for our standards, those at Consumers Energy have had their eye o nthis week's storm for about a week.
"This storm, which we knew there was potential for some high winds, but not necessarily the most severe we'd ever seen, so in scenarios like that, a lot of it's just preparing," said Tracy Wimmer, Consumers Energy.
...and Mid-Michigan knows whether it's next month or even later this week, more snow is on the way.
"Should the forecast continue to show that we're expecting significant weather...but I think as we all know, things can change on a dime in either direction. So, at this point, we've got our people on our equipment ready and whatever happens we'll be prepared to meet that challenge."
To prevent the problems and outages brought on by last year's severe ice storm, which caused more than 5,700 downed wires and more than 215,000 outages, Consumers has taken several measures.
"Even a half an inch of ice on a line is the equivalent to the weight of a baby grand piano. So how do we address that? A huge part of it is branches and tree trimming, because when those fall onto the lines, that exacerbates things. Even as storms, like this, are one of our number one concerns as high winds. Not for the integrity of the lines themselves, but because of the trees nearby."
Consumers has also implemented the use of new technology including drones, automatic transfer reclosers, and a helicopter to decrease the number of people impacted by outages, and the length of those who are impacted.
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