683 lose power near Byron, Lennon; cause listed only as 'equipment issue'

Power went out again this week for hundreds of households at the east end of the county, and this time the utility did not blame the weather. Consumers Energy's outage map listed roughly 353 customers out near Byron and about 330 out near Lennon with the cause given as "equipment issue detected" — the company's own category, separate from the storm-damage tag it used on Thursday's outages.

That is about 683 customers in two communities, on top of a storm week that had already left much of the county in the dark. The Current reported Sept. 4 that a severe thunderstorm with 60 mph gusts and penny-size hail cut power to about 3,300 Consumers customers in at least 10 Shiawassee communities, including roughly 735 near Lennon.

The pattern is what stands out. Over several days the map carried separate storm-damage breaks near Perry (about 399, 221 and 64 customers), Bancroft (about 371 and 154), Laingsburg (about 394 and 293) and Lennon (about 735), with estimated restoration times running from 5:30 p.m. in the Lennon area to 9:15 a.m. the next morning near Elsie. Outages were also flagged near Corunna and Durand. Then came the equipment-issue round near Byron and Lennon, with the map also carrying equipment-issue entries near Durand and Laingsburg.

Consumers Energy has not published anything beyond the two-word cause line on its map. It has not said what piece of hardware failed near Byron and Lennon, why the Laingsburg area's circuits broke in five separate places on Sept. 3, or when the last Shiawassee customer from the storm round got power back. That question has been open on this desk since Sept. 4, when the storm outages were first logged.

This is not the first equipment-issue entry on the map here this summer. The Current reported Aug. 25 that Consumers listed two equipment-issue outages and a planned shutoff affecting roughly 62 customers around Owosso and Lennon, days after the utility scheduled — and later postponed — overnight substation work near Lennon that would have cut power to 1,350 customers.

Shiawassee County is mostly Consumers Energy territory, but not all of it. WNEM reported that more than a thousand DTE Energy customers lost power after severe thunderstorms crossed the Thumb region Wednesday evening. The Current has not independently confirmed whether any DTE customers in this county were among them, and DTE's outage map is separate from the Consumers map cited above.

What happens next

The desk has asked Consumers Energy for a plain account of what failed: the equipment involved in the Byron and Lennon outages, the reason the Laingsburg and Byron circuits broke at so many points, and the time the final customer was restored after the Sept. 3 storm. Customers can check current status and sign up for outage alerts on the company's outage map. We will publish the utility's answers when we have them, with the same prominence as this story.