200 homes near Newport Road among thousands without power in Metro Detroit
About 200 people along M-14 near Newport Road in Washtenaw County are without power as of 10 p.m. Thursday night, DTE Energy Spokesman John Austerberry confirmed.
Austerberry said those affected likely won’t have their power restored until after midnight at the earliest. He was not able to give a more accurate estimate. The outage began around 6 p.m.
After 5 days of hot weather, Austerberry said the company’s electrical equipment has been working at a much higher than normal pace.
Power outages in Southeast Michigan remained right around 30,000 customers at any one time Thursday, he said, with some customers losing service as others were having theirs restored. That number was at about 26,000 at 9 p.m.
Austerberry compared the situation to running a vehicle at full-throttle on a wide-open road for hours at a time. Things that work reliably under normal conditions are strained after working in overdrive, he said.
He advised customers to take added precautions like turning the thermostat down after leaving for work and saving washer, dryer and dishwasher usage for early in the morning or after 9 p.m.
Temperatures hovered around 90 degrees at 10 p.m. Thursday and were expected to be above 90 degrees on Friday, though an afternoon thunderstorm is forecasted.
Comments
acd5835
Fri, Jul 22, 2011 : 1:07 p.m.
If you have that many problems with power outages, invest $3000 into a generator (either a whole-house standby from Generac or Kohler) or do what I did and get a 6kW portable emergency generator, have a transfer switch put in and either buy one or convert your portable generator to natural gas or propane. I ran a 1" black pipe gas line into the garage, as well as a outlet sized enough for the whole house right into the breaker panel. My 6kW generator runs the whole house easily minus the AC. If you get a few more kW rating, you can even start a regular 3 ton AC unit. Better yet, look into a MicroCHP unit - combined heat and power. You generate your own power onsite full time and only receive natural gas service from DTE. Electric problem solved, and you get a side benefit of an ultra high efficiency furnace.
Pete Warburton
Fri, Jul 22, 2011 : 11:16 a.m.
As one of the unlucky 200...This frequent power outage area has been problem for the better part of ten years... We have gone to the Ann Arbor energy commision. Four years ago Paul Gantz of DTE outlined all the steps being taken to solve the problem. Yet if a chipmunk farts in the wrong place in Bird Hills Nature Area 200 people lose power. Once when I stated we should find a different power provider for Ann Arbor...An executive said good luck with that " DTE still services the lines"...Catch 22 ?
bunnyabbot
Fri, Jul 22, 2011 : 4:44 a.m.
the fact of the matter is the US power grid system, the whole infrastructure of it is completely old, for lack of a better word (there was a recent article about it in National Geographic that was quite good). After reading several articles on it and all of the information that came out during the big power outage of 2002 I am surprised it doesn't happen more often, specially with all the air conditioners running. I hardly think one would have to rent a hotel room just b/c the power goes out, unless of course someone is newborn, old or sick. Power went out several times for two or three days at a time on the west side when I was growing up. We took showers before bed and slept in the basement if we had to, kept the shades drawn and cooked on the bbq. Heck, we didn't even have a/c growing up, my parents got it after the kids left the house. Loads of people live without a/c or refridgeration and the world still turns. of course, Newport Road does have some really expensive (rich people) homes back in there, so I am not surprised to hear (again) someone complain about DTE not enhancing capacity (to their homes)
Mark Rosentraub
Fri, Jul 22, 2011 : 3:27 a.m.
I have lived in this area for three summers and each one has had a power outage. This is not a situation where the system gets overloaded. This is a situation where DTE continues to fail to put in sufficient capacity and material. There is no power outage 150 years east of this location. Nor is there one north or south. It occurs in the same area because DTE is not willing to enhance capacity since they suffer no financial losses when the power goes out. Of course we suffer with loss of food and sometimes we need to pay for hotel rooms. I find it interesting that the spokesperson talks about having power restored after midnight at the same time the web site says power will not be restored until Friday between 9:30 and 11:30 PM. But of course that is after midnight and is a more politically polite way of not responding to the question. When I called DTE tonight they told me they had no crew available to work on the problem until tomorrow, well after midnight.