State Performance Standards

State-regulated electric utilities are required to annually report to the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) on how well they were able to meet standards established to protect consumers from unacceptable levels of electric service and reliability. They include standards to help measure how utilities perform in emergency outage situations.

 Standards and 2010 Results

1. Complaint Response.  Utility must respond in three business days or less to at least 90 percent of any formal complaints filed against it with the MPSC. GLE score: 93 percent. 

2. Call Blockage. No more than 5 percent of incoming calls should receive a busy signal. GLE score:  1.03 percent. 

3. Meter Reading. At least 85 percent of the meters must be read within the approved time period. GLE score:  99.62 percent. 

4. Wire Down Relief Factor. At least 90 percent of the time, a utility must respond within four hours to nonutility employees, such as firefighters, who request relief from guarding a downed power line. GLE score: 100 percent. 

5. New Service Installation. At least 90 percent of new services must be installed in 15 business days or less. Great Lakes Energy handled 600 new service installations last year, excluding those installed in combination with primary lines. GLE score:  100 percent. 

6. Average Call Answer Time. Calls must be answered on average in less than 90 seconds. In 2010, the cooperative handled 400,000 calls through its Call Center, outage and operator queues. GLE score: 38.38 seconds. 

7. Outage Restoration (Normal Conditions).  At least 90 percent of the customers should have their power restored in eight hours or less. GLE score:  98.8 percent. 

8. Outage Restoration (Catastrophic Conditions). At least 90 percent of the customers should have their power restored in 60 hours or less. GLE score: 100 percent. Great Lakes Energy experienced one catastrophic event in late October 2010 when high winds over an extended tiem left more than 94,000 GLE members without power throughout its service territory.

State rules define catastrophic conditions as either severe weather conditions that result in service interruptions to at least 10 percent of a utility’s customers or events of sufficient magnitude that result in a government issued state of emergency declaration.

 9. Outage Restoration (All Conditions). Power should be restored to at least 90 percent of the customers in 36 hours or less under normal and catastrophic conditions.  GLE score:  98.61 percent.

 10. Same Circuit Repetitive Interruption. No more than 5.0 percent of the utility’s electric circuits should experience five or more outages in a 12 month period. GLE score:  0.046 percent. 

The good scores for outage-related standards reflect the cooperative’s commitment to provide all members with a high level of reliable service. Big investments were made in recent years to keep trees away from power lines; upgrade miles of older, less dependable lines and employ new technologies to find and correct line problems more quickly and effectively. These major improvements also enable Great Lakes Energy to restore power more quickly when severe weather conditions cause massive, widespread damage to its distribution system.