3,000 remain without power in Washtenaw; most should be back tonight
Related Story: Ann Arbor area businesses, schools and residents adjust to power outages
DTE Energy said Saturday morning that although about 3,000 customers remain without electricity in Washtenaw County, most should see their power restored today or tonight.
"We should have the vast majority back by late tonight," DTE spokesperson Scott Simons said this morning. Some isolated repairs will likely extend into Sunday, he added.
DTE crews have been working steadily since Thursday's storms, which knocked out power to about 15,000 customers in Washtenaw County and thousands more throughout the region.
SImons noted that DTE is now dealing with "a couple thousand" individual outage problems, each of which may take as long to resolve as a problem affecting hundreds of customers at once. "We're entering the slowest part of the restoration process," he said.
Simons added that DTE appreciates its customers' continued patience. DTE's website has a map showing current outages; although the map was down for a time this morning, it was expected to be working again shortly.
Today's weather forecast expects continued extreme heat, with a high temperature above 100 degrees. After a low of 64 tonight, the heat is expected to moderate tomorrow, with a high of around 84. Thunderstorms are possible today and tonight.
Comments
John Campbell
Sun, Jul 8, 2012 : 8:05 p.m.
DTE handled their challenges very poorly. We need to figure out a way to understand the true nature of the causes (which may include some combination of storms, high usage, incompetence, not enough trained workers, insufficient/outdated equipment, etc...). In Saline I had 3 outages in 3 days, one for 2 hours, one for 17 hours, and one for 9 hours. Each time DTE said power would restored between 9:30 PM and 11PM that night. Clearly their estimates are either PR (and unrelated to an actual estimate) or they are very poor at estimating. It appears very tough to hold a monopoly accountable, either through government or media, and as consumers we don't have enough choice to have any power. Lowes is happy as generators are selling like hotcakes. Frustrating.
Halter
Sun, Jul 8, 2012 : 1:23 a.m.
Well this is now outdated... Power went back out an hour ago after having been restored...and DTE outage map now indicates over 10,000 outages again. Clearly Ann Arbors old grid system needs a major overhaul if restoring power to one area results in spill-over outages in other areas.
AfterDark
Sun, Jul 8, 2012 : 3:20 a.m.
kinda depends upon what failed - sometimes a larger area needs to be interrupted briefly in order to enact repairs e.g. swapping out parts in a substation also, depending upon what failed, it's incorrect to assume that DTE has every single part necessary to complete the repair - it's not always just downed wires or blown transformers - and with the widespread outages in the Great Lakes, Mid-Atlantic, and other regions it's entirely possible some parts aren't as readily available
Cash
Sat, Jul 7, 2012 : 10:31 p.m.
Seniors (over 80 yrs old) here were told restoration by Monday by midnight. They have been without power since Wednesday at 10PM....no storm involvement. It's hard for elderly as it is, and they won't leave their home for several reasons. It was upsetting to them to get a call from DTE asking them if they were happy with their repair....when they were still without power.
glacialerratic
Sat, Jul 7, 2012 : 8:19 p.m.
13 houses in our neighborhood have been told to not expect power until tomorrow night (Monday), with no explanation why there don't seem to be any crews working. This will be 5 days. Fewer customers without power should allow them to tackle remaining less complex problems, like ours, more quickly. Why doesn't AA.com do any reporting other than repeat DTE's press handouts?
mike gatti
Sun, Jul 8, 2012 : 12:36 a.m.
As a fellow state grad and I assume sporty please is don't use the name if you are going to be such a bore. a2.com could look at dte's map and ask the question why pockets have gone out well after the storm and report that they did not receive an answer. That would let reader know dte is being non responsive and then the stories would not read as if dte was actually saying something.
JD
Sat, Jul 7, 2012 : 10:15 p.m.
Think of all the greenhouse gasses that aren't being emitted. You should get carbon credits for having your power out. That's green!
mpope
Sat, Jul 7, 2012 : 9:52 p.m.
GlacialE, i second your querry. We went out four hours after the storm. We've been told late Sunday night power might return. We're eighteen months in our house and this is our third outage ( though only the first lasting more than a day.) Losing the ac is a pain. Losing a bunch of groceries is expensive. But losing use of the c-pap, the special ed computer programs for our kid, and my ability to work from home is a steeper loss. (Losing the use of my coffee grinder is a personal sorrow that I wouldnt expect strangers to understand.)
Sparty
Sat, Jul 7, 2012 : 8:59 p.m.
What should they do? Climb trees and pull on the wires to find out why they aren't working? Who can they ask, but DTE, about when power will be restored and why there are delays ?
mpope
Sat, Jul 7, 2012 : 7:52 p.m.
but our neighborhood power went out 4 hours after the storm went through. why is that?
Robert Granville
Sun, Jul 8, 2012 : 1:40 a.m.
Sometimes trees/branches fall slowly?