Consumers Energy is a public utility that provides natural gas and electricity to more than 6 million of Michigan's 10 million residents. It serves customers in all 68 of the state’s Lower Peninsula counties.
The company was founded in 1886 as Commonwealth Power Company by William A. Foote, originally tasked to install electric lighting in downtown Jackson. (His wife later founded Foote Hospital, also in Jackson, Michigan.) After a series of acqu...
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Consumers Energy is a public utility that provides natural gas and electricity to more than 6 million of Michigan's 10 million residents. It serves customers in all 68 of the state’s Lower Peninsula counties.
The company was founded in 1886 as Commonwealth Power Company by William A. Foote, originally tasked to install electric lighting in downtown Jackson. (His wife later founded Foote Hospital, also in Jackson, Michigan.) After a series of acquisitions and mergers involving other local electric, gas, and trolley companies which were properties of W.A. Foote, as well as Anton G. Hodenpyl and H. D. Walbridge, the company incorporated as Consumers Power Company in 1910 in Maine, and became part of the utility holding conglomerate Commonwealth and Southern, which held utilities in 10 other states.
Commonwealth and Southern dissolved in 1946, leaving Consumers Power (and all other utility holdings) an independent company. In 1968, the company reincorporated in Michigan.
In 1997, the name...
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