The violent storms that knocked out electricity Tuesda y to about 300,000 DTE Energy customers is expected to cost the utility more than $50 million to repair, and thousands of customers, the utility acknowledged, still won't get their lights back on until Friday.
"We understand the challenge not having electricity presents," Brian Calka, DTE’s vice president for distribution operations told reporters at an 11 a.m. Wednesday briefing at the utility’s Detroit headquarters. "We are laser focused on removing safety hazards but also restoring power over the next couple of days."
His request to customers: "Please be patient with us," and treat our workers "with respect."
In an interview with the Free Press after the news conference, the utility executive acknowledged that the utility must do better to meet its customer’s expectations and to address the challenges of climate change. He also urged DTE customers with complaints, concerns from the outage to contact the utility directly.
More: Michigan utilities rush to restore power as forecasts call for another hot, muggy day
The minimum standard set by the Michigan Public Service Commission for utilities is a $38 credit for customers who lost power for 16 hours, when less than 1% of the customers have an outage, and 48 hours when it’s between 1% and 10%, and 96 hours, when its 10% or more.
Every day beyond that, customers get $38 a day.
Calka, however, did not rule out, in some special cases, crediting customers with big losses more.
Smart grid system
About 75% of the power outages are expected to be restored late Wednesday, DTE said. That goes to 90% by the end of Thursday, and most — if not all — of the remaining customer should have their lights back on by the end of Friday. Among the homes and businesses that lost power, DTE said there also were about 350 schools.
And another 190,000 Consumers Energy customers also lost power Tuesday in an earlier set of storms that affect the western and northern part of the state. The Jackson-based utility, which had a slight head start on repairs, said it expected most of its customers to have their power restored by the end of the day Thursday.
During his news conference, Calka — who said his own power did not go out at his Northville home, but briefly flickered — detailed what caused the widespread outages in southeast Michigan, what the company is doing to restore it, and why power reliability is so important.
The storms which southeast Michigan hit at about 5 p.m., brought straight-line winds of 60-70 mph, which are unusually strong.
Winds in a moderate tornado start at 73 mph. The damaging winds, Calka added, caused damage over a wide area, essentially from the tip of the Thumb to the Ohio border, which has been making the damage more difficult — and time consuming — to repair.
Calka said more than 4,200 workers, about 1,200 which were brought in from other states to assist with the restoration, have been deployed to remove more than felled trees and downed limbs. They also, he added, face repairing damaged power infrastructure.
At the same time, the news conference gave DTE a chance to show off its high-tech Electric Systems Operation Center — what some call the system's brain ― with its giant, colorful screens in the background and dozens of operators, many with headsets, monitoring them.
And the new center, officials said, is aimed at making the grid more efficient, so when electricity does go out, power can be detected and rerouted quickly. Calka said the smart-grid system allows the utility to detect and fix disruptions much faster.
The smart-grid is still under construction and expected to be fully operational by 2029.
Climate change concerns
Still, Calka said, DTE’s power reliability must improve.
"The one hallmark of the utility industry is that there’s a lot of data around it," he said. "I would say from a frequency standpoint we’re generally average, maybe a little but better than average. From a duration standpoint, we are in the fourth quartile."
The bottom quartile.
In other words: By his own assessment, DTE's power reliability is lagging.
"We recognize that it’s not the level of service our customers expect and deserve," he said. "And I think it really underpins the investment plan that we’ve laid out recently. We’ve laid out a vision to reduce the frequency of out outages by 30% by 2029 and reduce the duration by 50%."
And many customers took to social media Wednesday to vent.
Calka mentioned other efforts, including trimming trees and replacing infrastructure.
But the DTE executive said that enhanced reliability is important, especially as the utility prepares for an auto industry transitioning to more electric vehicles and as scientists sound the alarm on the devastating effects of global climate change.
"We view climate change as one of the most important policy issues of our time," Calka said.
If predictions are accurate that human-caused climate change is leading to more frequent and, like the state experienced this week, more extreme weather patterns, the cost of power generation, he acknowledged, would increase significantly.
By how much? He did not have an estimate to offer.
But if a one-day weather event costs tens of millions, it likely will be at least a multiple of that.
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: DTE: Power reliability must improve, outage cost estimate at more than $50M
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