Tuesday, June 25, 2024 Following intense scrutiny by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s team, the Upper Peninsula Power Company (UPPCO) has voluntarily withdrawn its request for a permanent waiver. UPPCO had sought to count multiple outages during catastrophic conditions as a single outage, which would have reduced the number of repetitive outage credits issued under the amended Service Quality Rules (SQRs) implemented last year by the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC). Nessel intervened in April, deeming UPPCO’s request unreasonable and unnecessary.
In response to UPPCO’s withdrawal, Nessel requested that MPSC Staff ensure UPPCO now has effective processes to promptly evaluate all outages eligible for outage credits under the SQRs and to issue these credits in a timely manner. She also asked MPSC Staff to determine whether UPPCO has issued billing credits on time since April 10, 2023, as legally required. If credits have been delayed, Nessel urged UPPCO to provide supplemental credits for each month of delay.
The Attorney General’s review raised reasonable doubts about whether UPPCO has issued billing credits within 90 days of each qualifying outage, as required by the SQRs. “While I am glad that UPPCO has withdrawn its request, I remain deeply concerned about the company’s compliance with the outage credits rules,” Nessel said. “As the state regulator of UPPCO, the MPSC must carefully oversee the company’s adherence, and all audit results shou.
