For the past decade, the downtown Detroit area has been booming. Corporate offices, restaurants, shops, hotels and residents have been rapidly coming to the area, and there are many new construction projects on the horizon. With anticipation of several new neighbors moving in, DTE Energy is working to ensure our electric grid can meet the current and future needs of those who live, work and play the city.
That is why we created the City of Detroit Infrastructure (CODI) strategy. The city of Detroit was one of the first cities in the nation to be fully electrified more than 100 years ago. CODI aims to take the infrastructure of Thomas Edison’s day and modernize it to support our customers’ growing needs. To accomplish this, we are investing more than $1.2 billion to remove and replace the electric infrastructure in downtown Detroit (Central Business District, Corktown, East and West Riverfront areas and Eastern Market, Midtown and New Center).
“We’re committed to investing in and building a safer, more reliable electric grid that supports the growing demands of our communities,” Aaron Balch, manager of engineering support, said. “The CODI strategy will help us do this by addressing the unique electric infrastructure needs of downtown Detroit, paving the way for a more electrified future.”
In addition to helping keep the lights on for customers, the work will also increase the gird’s safety and capacity. This means we can power more homes and businesses and support clean energy solutions like more electric vehicles.
Through 2035, we will complete 13 rebuilding projects, which will benefit the nearly 32,000 DTE customers in the area. The work includes:
- Constructing new, modern substations with greater capacity that will deliver even more power to downtown Detroit.
- Completely removing and replacing underground and overhead electric systems. This includes the installing new utility poles, wires and cables, transformers and electrical equipment that help deliver power from substations to homes and businesses.
- Expanding and upgrading equipment at substations.
- Installing smart grid devices called reclosers. These devices will help reroute power to many customers during an outage while we make repairs.
- Trimming or removing trees growing close to power lines.
- Removing obsolete, aging infrastructure, and decommissioning 10 90-year-old substations.
The CODI strategy, along with DTE’s other reliability improvement work, will help ensure Detroit has reliable power now and far in the future.
Learn more about our ongoing CODI projects:
- Corktown Substation construction and electrical equipment rebuild in the Corktown and West Riverfront areas
- Electrical equipment rebuild in Midtown, Brush Park, Douglas and Brewster Homes neighborhoods
- Electrical equipment rebuild in the Cultural Center, Eastern Market, Forest Park, McDougall-Hunt northern Midtown, Medbury Park, Medical Center, Poletown East and Wayne State neighborhoods
- Islandview Substation construction and equipment rebuild in the East Village, Elmwood Park, Gold Coast, Indian Village, Islandview, Joseph Berry Sub, Lafayette Park, McDougall-Hunt, Rivertown and West Village neighborhoods
- Promenade Substation construction and equipment rebuild in the Airport Sub, Buffalo-Charles, Gratiot Town/Kettering, Gratiot Woods, a portion of Hamtramck, Pingree Park and West End neighborhoods
All this work is part of our four-point plan to improve reliability: trimming trees, upgrading existing infrastructure, rebuilding older sections of the grid and accelerating our transition to a smart grid. Read about the four-point plan or work happening in your neighborhood at empoweringmichigan.com/reliability-improvements.