ANN ARBOR, Mich. – The recent widespread power outages have sparked a renewed interest in switching to public power.
The Ann Arbor for Public Power campaign held a virtual town hall Thursday (March 2), where more than 80 people signed on to learn about the potential change.
The coalition is pushing to ditch DTE Energy, an investor-owned utility company, and create its own municipal electric utility.
Ann Arbor for Public Power President Greg Woodring said public power utilities tend to be more reliable and less expensive.
“It’s never really been more obvious than in this recent outage just how different the reliability is between public power utility and investor-owned utilities like DTE,” said Woodring.
The Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners has also taken an interest in making the switch. The board voted Wednesday to have its attorneys look into the possibility of a county-wide public power utility.
Commissioner Yousef Rabhi spoke during Thursday’s (March 2) town hall, expressing outrage over the 60,000 outages reported in Washtenaw County after last week’s ice storm.
“What is happening is not normal. What is happening is not acceptable,” Rabhi said. “When we pay our utility bills, we expect to have our lights on. We are not paying our bills, so some fat cats on Wall Street can have lobster dinners and caviar.”
More: Ann Arbor community fights back against utility company after ice storm