Coldwater Coldwater's citizen-owned electric utility provides electric energy at a cost based on the actual operating, maintenance and debt service expense. Rates to metered electric customers have been reduced, in 1988 and again in 1993. These rate reductions were made possible by cost savings from the energy supplied by the Michigan South Central Power Agency. The cost savings were passed on to the consumer through discounting of all metered electric rates. Another benefit of public power is reliability of service.
Outages are an inevitable consequence of operating and electric utility.
The most common causes of outages are lightning storms, trees and animals. The CBPU has programs for maintaining its facilities and trimming tree limbs to reduce the number of outages. The Customer Average Interruption Duration Index is 47 minutes. The average customer that experienced an outage was off for 47 minutes. The System Average Interruption Index is 50 minutes.