Consumers Shutting Off Thousands of MI Residents' Power Today

Michigan just got its first big winter weather warning snowstorm of the year, so it left a lot of people on social media very uneasy when Consumers said that thousands of residents would be without power for about six hours for maintenance on Friday, December 6th.

Many people are questioning why this job couldn’t have been done at any other time of the year when most people are already at work or school. The fact that we have so much snow and the fact that it’s so cold makes it hard for people to understand that maintenance is required.

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But as ABC12 News reports, the outage, which will impact around 3,500 residents in the Flint area, is actually important in maintaining the stability of their generators, and without the scheduled maintenance, the weather could end up making things a lot worse for Flint residents

Consumers Energy is planning to shut off electricity to about 3,500 customers in the Flint area at 11:55 p.m. Friday. The outage is scheduled to last about six hours.

As they continued, there could be a second shut-off over the weekend:

A second planned outage is possible beginning at 11:55 p.m. Saturday if crews can't complete the work on time Friday night.

Although it may not seem necessary to do it during such conditions, Consumers Energy spokeswoman Tracy Wimmer said that the timing is ideal, considering the coming weather:

Doing this type of maintenance now prevents many more customers from experiencing an outage due to equipment failure in the future and is an important part of our work to ensure grid reliability.