Power outage affects nearly 500 DTE Energy customers in Ann Arbor
Update: Power was restored at 10 a.m. Thursday morning. DTE spokesman John Austerberry said the outage was weather-related.
The power should be back on by about 10 a.m. this morning for about 475 DTE Energy customers on the southwest side of Ann Arbor without electricity, a spokesman for the utility said.
The power outage began about 7:30 a.m. about the time a thunderstorm was moving through the area. Austerberry said it’s likely the outage is related to the storm but he could not be sure.
About 1,100 DTE Energy customers were without power system-wide, a number that Austerberry said is normal on an average day for the utility with 2.2 million customers and 7,600 square miles of service area.
DTE's power outage map shows the area without power straddles Stadium Boulevard south of Pauline Boulevard and west of South Seventh Street.
The power outage area is shown in green. Purple areas represent single customers or very small numbers of customers without power.
Comments
Cash
Thu, Aug 18, 2011 : 6:08 p.m.
JAM2: "the failures that occur on circuits as old as the ones that struggle here in Ann Arbor have nothing to do with maintenance and everything to do with age of transformers and lines.." Hello? Replacing old lines IS maintenance that we want to see happening. I could drive my vehicle and never replace my tires. What would happen? Common sense says they will fail. My coworkers in a heartland state never lose power...haven't lost it through tornados and ice storms etc.....and yet ours goes out because a leaf blows in the trees? That's not acceptable. We should NOT accept it. The workers that have been cut from DTE should be called back and put to work doing replacement of failing lines.
JAM2
Tue, Sep 6, 2011 : 9:18 p.m.
so when a power plant runs its useful life, is replacing it considered maintenance too? replacing power lines is not considered maintenance...it's considered a capital investment... your analogy provides all the insight we need into your understanding of how electric distribution systems work... lastly, which workers are you referring too? DTE has not done any lay-offs throughout this entire downturn in the economy...probably the only major employer in the state that can say as much...they did reduce some contract assignments, but those were for far less important tasks than power line teams...not something they would possibly consider outsourcing given its extreme importance to reliability.
JAM2
Thu, Aug 18, 2011 : 5:37 p.m.
@Bob Carlin...do you actually understand how utilities make money? the failures that occur on circuits as old as the ones that struggle here in Ann Arbor have nothing to do with maintenance and everything to do with age of transformers and lines...the laws of thermodynamics do not see shades of "green" no matter how badly you think DTE wishes they did. btw, to which standard are you referring? @everyone who wants DTE to simply "upgrade the system"...are you all ok with a min 100% increase in rates for a few years? just curious, because the upgrades you are requesting would prob cost ratepayers several BILLION dollars overnight...does anyone actually think that there are utility executives in an office somewhere twiddling thumbs and laughing over the fact that they are MANDATED to provide safe/reliable power at as AFFORDABLE a rate possible with a system that was never designed to do what we're asking of it? Even if you take the position that DTE cares not about customers and only about making money...how exactly does that logic jibe with allowing power outages to occur? Is the suggestion that investors don't recognize the downside risk of an electric utility that has frequent outages? Makes no sense... In general, the public does not understand how a utility makes its money...for example, DTE's revenues are "decoupled" from the power it sells...so there is no incentive to just sell more. they make a REGULATED return on investment in capital...or at least they try...almost never actually hit those returns. and when they do, it's not like we're talking major margins. they tend to be in the 10-11% range.
spm
Thu, Aug 18, 2011 : 4:35 p.m.
I'm not sure why, but where I live around the old west side we never have power outages (knock on wood). I can't recall the last time it happened since the time all the eastern seaboard went dark back in 2003 or 2004. I'm assuming it's because I live closer to Main street, but I'm not sure why that would make much difference? When I lived up around the north side of town it seemed like the power would go out when anyone would sneeze.
nickcarraweigh
Thu, Aug 18, 2011 : 3 p.m.
It's Obama's fault. The mosquitoes, too. Ask anybody in the Tea Party.
Jen Eyer
Thu, Aug 18, 2011 : 2:42 p.m.
When posting this story on our Facebook page this morning, we asked: "Does Ann Arbor have bad power karma?" Got some good responses: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/AnnArborcom/posts/221206944598679" rel='nofollow'>https://www.facebook.com/AnnArborcom/posts/221206944598679</a> Jeff Sabatini: No, DTE has bad service. Patrick Haggood: It's all the simultaneous dimensional transportation experiments that keep overloading the grid. Todd Austin: No, it has a 19th-century power grid - central generation with above-ground power lines strung from dead trees. It's no wonder we continue to suffer from 19th-century infrastructure issues. We're more concerned with boogeyman threats like "shariah law" than we are about living in a rational modern society. Shaw Lacy: Why Ann Arborites aren't demanding that we upgrade our infrastructure is beyond me. When I travel to other countries' major cities, I come back and feel like the infrastructure of Ann Arbor is out-of-date and out-of-touch, and not the home to one of the world's foremost research universities.
K32
Thu, Aug 18, 2011 : 1:43 p.m.
I've never lived in a place where the electric service was so poor. DTE is a horrible utility.
Cash
Thu, Aug 18, 2011 : 1:20 p.m.
No surprise here. I did see the leaves move and hear some thunder. I immediately charged my cell and got out my battery operated lantern. I suppose they do the same in Pakistan.
Bob Carlin
Thu, Aug 18, 2011 : 12:59 p.m.
I've lived in several third world countries. In each of them, electric service was more reliable than it is in AA. I assume the problem is that it's more profitable for DTE to wait until something fails instead of spending on the maintenance needed to make the system up to standard.