Energy Monopolies = Gas+Electric+Water as 1 PRIVATE Entity

[O3H]

Could the metro Detroit area ever see a private entity
controlling the natural gas + electric + water ?
Don't laugh it happened in 2017, in America.

http://bit.ly/EnergyMonopoly

Eversource bought Aquarion - with nearly 4 million electric, natural gas and water customers combined in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

[Wesley Mouch]

I don't see that the merger of Michcon and DTE has harmed consumers. It remains a regulated monopoly, and serves the public at least as well as DWSD. The private monopoly model with regulation seems to be working well. I suspect Detroiters would benefit if DTE took over DWSD.

If Detroiters were given the choice between keeping DWSD vs. letting DTE handle water, its clear which would be better.

Yet I do find it troubling the think of one private monopoly. But why not, if they can do as good a job as DTE does.

[O3H]

There are many in SouthEast Michigan who HATE the DTE company.
Repeated, frequent outages, in certain areas, leave residents
in the dark, shut off stoves in baking cycles, stop computer programs,
kill machinery stopping/seizing product, etc., etc.
Extremely annoying to those with small home business type operations.
The electrical grid is NOT what some might call modern, up-to-date.
...And because they are a monopoly, residents are plain stuck with it.

DTE is beholden to stockholders - at that's the bottom line.
http://www.nasdaq.com/article/dte-en...-of-7-cm872542

Need proof of outrage, many pages like this exist
http://www.atdetroit.net/forum/messages/5/163473.html

People file complaints often about DTE
http://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/0%2C160...5---%2C00.html

[Gistok]

I live in central St. Clair Shores, and the number of power failures has really increased in the last 5 years... the last major one was from last winter, where we lost power for 4 days.

Because our neighborhood had just a brownout... we were put at the bottom of the repair list. But having a brownout only allows you dim lighting... all your appliances have to be shut off. The only saving grace for our neighborhood was when everyone went to bed at 11PM last winter, full power returned for those that were still up and you could run your furnace to bring the inside house temp back up to normal before people awoke at 6AM, and the brownout started all over again. At least my inside home temp never went below 60 degrees... unlike those that weren't famiiar with this trick.

Here in SCS with all the power outage of the last few years, the sales of home generators has probably grown to about 20% of the populace. On days with an outage, the drone of the generators sounds like everyone running their lawn mowers at the same time.

During wind and thunderstorms, the online DTE Outage Map lights up like a Christmas tree.

Ironically even though we never have a natural gas outage... the major suburban provider [[Consumers Energy) is replacing all the gas lines to the house here in SCS one street at a time.

I do believe that a lot of people have cut back in their stock of items in their home freezers, and who can blame them.

Our entire infrastructure, both water, electric, and roads, etc., has gotten worse... but sadly neither the politicians nor utilities is stepping up to the plate to do more that bandaid fixes. Even DTE's tree trimming is too little too late.

However, for me, the worst service history is Comcast Internet/Cable.

[O3H]

Agreed Gistok, the outages pushed sales of generators up quite a bit.

Let's hope the Comcast monster stays far away from other utilities.
We tend to forget Comcast is now NBCUniversal + Time Warner.
along with the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s Philadelphia Flyers.
They may also acquire 21st Century Fox in 2018.