Consumers has 15 storage fields with 350 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage, [Consumers Vice President Garrick] Rochow said.
"There's not only a large supply to meet our customers' needs for the entire winter, but there's the ability to pull even more gas into state through the pipeline system," Rochow said. "So there is no risk from a long-term reserve perspective."
The utility has 1.8 million business and residential natural gas customers.
Here's the math (I think):
350 billion cubic feet of natural gas = 350 trillion btu (1 billion cf = 1 trillion btu);
I use roughly 156 million natural gas btu per year, on average, in my single family household (approximately 150,000 cf X 1.037 million btu per 1000 cf.);
If all Consumers' customers were like me, which they aren't, Consumers Energy could supply 2.24 million such households for one year before needing to resupply the storage fields, or 59% of Michigan's households.
Michigan has roughly 3.8 million households X 2.55 people per household = 9.7 million. Estimated population in 2017 was just under 10 million.
Supplying electricity is a completely separate issue.
