DTE Energy is expanding and upgrading the substation that powers southeast Dearborn and Detroit’s Claytown, Michigan-Martin and Springwells neighborhoods.
Substations are critical parts of the electric grid that adjust voltage levels coming from power plants to deliver electricity safely and efficiently to homes and businesses. When complete, these substation upgrades will bring greater reliability to nearly 7,000 residents in these communities.
The $21 million project includes work both inside and outside of the substation. In the substation, DTE will relocate and upgrade transformers, breakers, cabling and other equipment. DTE will expand the substation by adding new equipment outside the substation, including smart grid devices, that will help improve reliability and power quality. The new equipment will allow DTE to remotely monitor and control power flow at the substation, enabling the company to identify and fix issues faster. This will help keep power on for customers, especially during extreme weather.
Why we’re upgrading
In the past, heavy rainfall caused the substation basement to flood, damaging vital equipment. To ensure all customers in the area receive the power they need and reliability they deserve, DTE swiftly moved some customers’ service to nearby substations. DTE also placed portable generators in the community and a collection of power poles outside of the substation that will help distribute power from the substation to customers. These will be removed when the expansion is completed.
These temporary solutions have helped improve short-term capacity constraints and reliability issues, while DTE worked on more permanent fixes. The expansion will restore the substation’s capacity to power all the customers in this area.
Our progress
2025
- Crews are installing two transformers outside of the substation, where three of four transformers inside have already been rebuilt and are fully operational. The transformers will provide a significant increase in both power reliability and the ability to handle an increasing electric load for DTE customers in this area.
2023-2024
- Rebuilt a transformer inside of the substation to help us deliver power to customers safely and reliably. Crews will rebuild three additional transformers inside the substation next year.
- Installed above ground infrastructure, including a power distribution center. A PDC works a lot like the brakers in your home, allowing us to monitor and control the flow of power.
- Installed new conduit outside of the substation, which will protect new underground cables.
- Installed new breakers and two new transformers in the substation.
- Pulled in one new power line from the ground level to the upper level and installed two of four new transformers. This will help prevent any future equipment damage from possible flooding.
- Replaced the roof of the substation.
- Put up a new fence around the exterior of the substation to provide more room for new outdoor equipment.
Upgrades like this are part of DTE’s commitment to reduce outages by 30% while cutting outage times in half by the end of 2029. You can learn more about DTE’s substation work or its plan to build the grid of the future, by visiting empoweringmichigan.com/reliability-improvements or the DTE Power Improvements Map.