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Storms are a certainty throughout the summer in Michigan, and this year’s storm season has been relentless. Your community has been hit by 12 storms this summer, many of them severe, that caused significant damage to poles, power lines, electrical equipment, trees, and the energy grid. All this damage resulted in power outages, safety hazards, and countless challenges and frustration for our customers.

At DTE, we understand how frustrating losing power can be. That’s why our number one priority during storms is to restore power to our impacted customers as safely and efficiently as possible. This means that during restoration work, our crews will often make temporary fixes to restore power to a certain area so that they can move quickly to the next pocket of outages. This method greatly reduces the time our customers spend without power.

Watch this video to learn more about our storm restoration process:

 

While our crews are busy working around the clock to restore power, our engineers, planners, and strategists are putting together work packages to detail what repairs need to be made in hard-hit communities so that their power is more reliable in the future. This work often includes plans for additional tree trimming and upgrades to equipment that may have been damaged during the storm.

After power has been restored to all impacted customers, our crews will use those work packages and revisit sites where they made temporary fixes to perform permanent repairs to boost the reliability in that community.

“Our first concern during a storm or any outage event is always going to be our customers,” said Russ Pogats, manager of the DTE Emergency Preparedness and Storm team. “How do we get our customers’ lights back on in a safe and efficient manner? And then we shift our thinking to how do we restore and upgrade our grid so that they don’t lose power during the next storm.”

Due to the constant cadence of storms this past summer, our crews were not always able to revisit all those sites before the next storm hit. This, combined with the severity of the weather, led to some of the power reliability issues that plagued some communities throughout our service territory.

We know this is unacceptable. That’s why we are proactively accelerating tree trim and equipment upgrade work throughout the rest of the year and into 2022 to drastically strengthen our electric grid. Read more about the commitment we’re making to your community and throughout Southeast Michigan here.

You may be seeing more of our crews in the coming months as part of our accelerated electric reliability projects in your area, including more tree trimming and infrastructure updates. All these projects are being done to improve your service and reliability for the short- and long term.

Make sure to regularly check the Oak Park community page to learn more about what’s going on in your neighborhood. You can also follow DTE’s Facebook and Twitter for even more updates and information.