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(Photo: Consumers Energy Facebook)
Phew. Michigan has made it through 99-year record cold with its heat on.
Consumers Energy says customers helped avert a crisis by heeding warnings to reduce energy use after a Wednesday fire at a compression station in northern Macomb County threatened supply. The station was reportedly handling gas capacity for nearly 2 million customers when the fire occurred.
Energy use dipped at least 10 percent Wednesday night after the warning went out, as temperatures fell to their lowest this week. The voluntary restriction was lifted at midnight Friday.
Now, with our heat cranked back up and the cold snap in the rearview (it's now 1 degree!), we can breathe a sigh of relief and begin reflecting on our gas infrastructure... and get worked up again.
The Free Press spoke with an expert on the issue, who said that while Michigan's gas infrastructure is old, people shouldn't be worried. The paper offers the following breakdown of this week's crisis:
Consumers, like all utilities, buys natural gas ahead of time when prices are good and stores it in 15 underground storage fields scattered across the state. As it's needed, the company pumps it out of the ground and through the pipes that take it to homes and businesses.
[Consumers CEO Patti] Poppe said supply was not an issue ... The issue was getting it through the pipes.
The Ray facility is a compression station, which raises the pressure in the pipes to push it to the customers. When it went down, there was a risk of pressure dropping in the system, cutting off some customers.
Poppe said her company began scrambling, cranking up other compression stations and bringing online compression facilities that weren't scheduled to run Wednesday. It also pulled in gas from other suppliers like DTE Energy and SEMCO Energy to maintain pressure in the system.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has called for the state's energy supply system to be reviewed.