Alpena Power Company Is Trying To Get Out of Reimbursing Customers For Power Loss

This past month has been very difficult for the people living in the northern part of the lower peninsula. The damaging ice storms that impacted local communities left entire areas without power for days on end. Because of this damage and the days spent without power, many residents in Alpena are looking for reimbursement.

Luckily for the residents, they are able to take advantage of this situation by applying for outage credits. The credits would only come out to $40 a house, but with over 16,000 homes affected, the total cost to the power company will be over $1.5 million. However, the power company is trying to avoid that.

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Because of the devastating impacts that the ice storms caused, a utility company located in Alpena is doing what it can to save itself some serious money by not having to reimburse residents who went days without power.

MLive recently reported on the President and Chief Operating Officer, Ken Dragiewicz of the Alpena Power Company, saying that the price tag they're trying to avoid is way too much, based on the size of the company:

In my opinion, a storm of this magnitude is beyond the utility’s control, and following utility best practices for ice loading design and vegetation management would not have prevented large scale, long-duration outages.The outage credits in this circumstance are also unduly economically burdensome when compared to the size of Alpena Power Company.

There's no word yet as to whether the appeal the power company sent into the court will hold up, or if they'll need to issue the credits.