DETROIT (Michigan News Source) – As winter weather descended upon Michiganders throughout the state during the weekend, thousands of people found themselves with power outages once again. 

After parts of southeast Michigan were battered by winds and rain Sunday, more than 20,000 were without power as temperatures dropped significantly. 

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 By Monday morning, DTE Energy reported that roughly 5,700 customers were without service, though 99.75% maintained power.  The other main provider, Consumers Energy had about 90 customers in the same condition early Monday morning, but had 99.9% with service. 

Residents in Oakland County and Wayne County reported outages in the hundreds, of the more than 11,900 DTE customers that had lost power Sunday, many of the outages were caused by wind and tree damage.  

In the eastern part of the state, more than 1,700 customers in downtown Grand Rapids reported having lost power according to a Consumers Energy Outage Map, and more than 1,000 north of Rockford were in the same predicament.  

Last week before the legislature adjourned, Senator Jim Runestad (R-White Lake) admitted that he will be preparing a bill to heighten transparency requirements for companies with monopolies. Michigan provides large electric utility companies such as Consumers Energy and DTE Energy  with a special legal status preventing alternative electricity suppliers from attempting to do service in their service areas. 

“I think everything has got to be transparent, above and beyond a normal company,” Runestad said to the Detroit News. “This is not a normal company. This is a monopoly.” 

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While in the works, a draft of the bill would require utilities to report annually on lobbying expenses,  their contributions to nonprofit organizations and other political accounts, and their political action committee activities.  

Senator Runestad’s call for transparency comes after the companies answered committee questions after winter storms left more than a million without power for days. 

Vice President of Electric Operations with Consumers Energy, Chris Laird, mentioned that part of the issue with the response time for those without power in February was that their new outage map had defects; which have since been fixed. 

“We found a defect during the middle of the storm that was inaccurately reporting outages,” Laird said, “Some people were getting notified that their outage was going to be six, seven, eight days out, which was inaccurate, while other folks were getting notified they were back on when they actually weren’t.” 

The National Weather Service predicts that temperatures will drop into the 30s Monday and Tuesday night in Metro Detroit.