Towering trees are an essential part of the Michigan’s landscape, but overgrown branches account for 50% of the time DTE Energy customers spend without power. In addition, these branches can pose a serious public safety hazard when they interfere with power lines, especially during storms.
DTE is committed to increasing reliability of the electric grid for our customers and the communities we serve. That’s why we’ve accelerated our investment in tree trimming across Southeast Michigan.
DTE invested an additional $90 million toward tree trimming last year, following last year’s historic storms that resulted in outages for our customers. This investment is in addition to the $190 million we currently spend on tree trimming annually. The additional investment has been used to secure more crews. We now have 1,500 tree trimmers working six days a week, 10 hours a day. Within the last year, DTE trimmed more than 5,000 miles of trees along our power lines — greater than the distance from Detroit to Hawaii. In areas where we’ve completed tree trimming, our customers experience a significant improvement in reliability.
At DTE, we understand the beauty and environmental benefits trees bring to homes and businesses. Our arborists and tree trim teams will work with you when there are trees on your property that impact power lines to ensure we not only improve reliability but also keep as much of the tree’s integrity in place as possible. Read more about how we trim trees.
To learn more about our tree trimming efforts or about our reliability improvement projects in your community, visit empoweringmichigan.com/reliability-improvements.