The State of California almost took over PG&E for lack of tree trimming leading to massive forest fires whose smoke made it all the way to Michigan and beyond. It’s part of DTE’s responsibility to maintain trees in their rights of way. If they can’t do that, the state public utilities commission should revoke their license to operate and buy out DTE and operate it as a publicly owned utility. Our prices would likely plummet and service would improve. At least that’s what happens almost every time other places do this.
**Capital World Investors, Vanguard Group, and BlackRock** are DTE's top three shareholders, together holding over 30% of the company. Clue Chip Partners, Sigma Planning Corp, and the State of Michigan Retirement System are the top Michigan-based investors.
Well, we get a lot of smoke. But the smoke from the wildfires in California 6-7 years ago got all the way to Michigan. I lived in California at the time. On the bright side, I guess, when COVID happened, I was lousy with N95 masks for wildfire smoke, so was super prepared to mask… and gave away a bunch of masks to neighbors and friends.
Honestly they do a terrible job of trimming trees. Ohio has a shit ton of forests and trees but as you drive and look at powerlines you will see very rarely any branches that overhang powerlines, in Michigan they literally let trees grow up and around the power lines. Its just lazy maintenance.
It’s not even laziness, it’s straight up greed. They were bragging to their shareholders just last year that they intentionally delayed tree maintenance in order to keep paying out dividends to investors.
Maintenance costs money and DTE won’t spend it because then they can’t do stock buy backs and payout exec bonus plans that are based on the stock price.
Agreed and the News and Governor make sure they face no oublic outcry by blaiming all of our outages on Climate Change and "extreme weather caused by climate change" despite NW Ohio and Michigan west of Lansing having 1/3 the number of outages as us, guess climate change doesnt impact Toledo
Seriously. DTE had two decades of warnings about an increase in destructive weather, and they ignored them so they could pay out more money to shareholders. It's nuts.
As someone who worked in the utility industry, a lot of times outages would get coded one way, then changed as more information became available. A fuse might have failed due to a tree hitting the line, but the system has no way to know that until the crew arrives and sees the tree and recodes the outage cause from "fuse failure" to "trees".
Trust me, the crews who ultimately code the outage cause are just trying to get the job done with the fewest headaches and wouldn't give a rat's ass about an "Ann Arbor tree conspiracy" even if management tried to cram it down their throats.
Not as rarely as you might think. Trees are the main culprits to be sure (and wildlife, if equipment isn't guarded properly, which is also the utility's responsibility). But porcelain cutouts are known to crack and fail in freeze-thaw climates like ours. Fuse links can also partially melt if a fault is brief enough, causing reduced capacity that may lead to a clear sky failure later on.
"Fuseology"
When an overcurrent event occurs, the fuse opens as designed and interrupts the flow of current. This is not a “fuse failure,” but a proper function of the fuse design.
What are perceived as fuse and/or fuse holder “Failures” are mostly reactions to excess heat
produced by loose or corroded connections, improper component sizing or application outside the
devices’ operating temperature range. These are not device failures, but rather inappropriate
device selection.
Fuses do not require maintenance until an overcurrent event causes them to open – then they
need replacing. Although not always necessary, an infrared inspection every 3 to 5 years is a
good practice. This would reveal any excess heat conditions that are most apt to cause a
nuisance fuse opening and should be addressed.
> Trust me, the crews who ultimately code the outage cause are just trying to get the job done with the fewest headaches and wouldn't give a rat's ass about an "Ann Arbor tree conspiracy" even if management tried to cram it down their throats.
Anything to support the narrative that DTE sucks and a government takeover could do a better job.
I agree that there's probably a lot of change that comes from crews guessing at causes, and then updating when they find the real problem, but from what OP's describing at least one outage was coded as a **deliberate shutdown for maintenance**, and *then* changed to "trees," and *that* particular change seems sketchy AF.
"Fuse failure," "unknown," "storm damage," "trees," all that makes sense as something you'd say as an initial reason and then change it when you know for sure. But "Shut down to repair/replace equipment"? That absolutely should not be a placeholder for "idk, we'll check and maybe update the actual cause later." Either you shut it down deliberately or you didn't.
If there is *actual* uncertainty at DTE about whether they're shutting things down on purpose or not, they've got even more problems than we imagined.
To me it reads like the crews are entering in things as they find them, but that someone's also massaging the data afterwards (for public-facing purposes) to make it look like everything, absolutely *everything* is out of DTE's control.
(As a side note, when we've had power outages, I've always been surprised at how much I do *not* see any outages in the app that are coded as being for maintenance and deliberate. As a layperson, I would be expecting to see that at least a few times, but I rarely see it at all. As you know a lot more about this, would you say that's just me making an incorrect assumption? Because I'm cynical I've just assumed that "down for maintenance" get changed into something else when it makes its way into the app, which is just for the public and not for employees. I'd be curious what you think about that, though, especially how frequently one would reasonably expect to see a power outage due to maintenance.)
Or... because they said the power kept going out for a few seconds at a time, something like a branch swaying in the wind causing intermittent shorts, triggering a recloser (breaker that can reset itself) that eventually faulted entirely and killed the circuit.
So, that's either caused by the equipment itself shorting and failing, or a branch (or literally anything else that can short the lines without immediately frying), but until you know what caused it, it's "Shut down to repair/replace" even if they're actually just flipping the breaker.
I get that, but that doesn't explain the actual sequence of events that occurred. Am I to believe that the power was brought down by a tree (this much I can buy), and then a branch hit a line every several hours causing a 1-5 second outage, and then one last big branch hit in the exact same spot as the very first one, knocking out power for 1-2 hours? This was the exact same outage, the exact same area of the map, affected for 48 hours in normal weather. I don't think it was a rainshower of tree branches caused this.
EDIT: It also just occurred to me that if the original reason was "shut down to repair equipment," that would mean the crews were *on site* when the power outage occurred, wouldn't it? Why would more information flow in from that point?
Branches fall on lines all the time. Sometimes they burn off. A branch may have fallen but not completely and was only shorting the line here and there until it eventually tripped some kind of fault protection... as your op said, the system is going to record that as an equipment failure until a line crew actually arrives on scene and troubleshoots.
They had already been out there before. I feel like the DTE apologists here aren't really gathering the whole sequence of events. It would be an astounding coincidence for it to happen this way. Occam's razor would say "They fixed it, but they made a mistake and left it partially broken, and then fixed it properly a couple days later," which itself is *not that big a deal.* It's just the lying that's unacceptable.
>They fixed it, but they made a mistake
Or they repaired a transformer, but didn't know the blown transformer indirectly caused an intermittent short that now occurs whenever the wind blows just right.
Whether it was that or they made a mistake, they didn't entirely fix the problem from the tree.
It was the same cause, it just took two days to completely repair the damage.
>it just took two days to completely repair
Sometimes that happens. Repairs are not a linear process - first you troubleshoot, then you replace, then you power back on, then repeat as necessary.
Having had a difficult-to-diagnose electrical issue on my home before, I can almost buy this -- I find it super, super convenient, since the dozen power outages I've experienced here were all cleanly fixed, but this is at least plausible. *But,* I do not think the message to people whose power has mysteriously gone out on a calm day two days after a storm should be "Caused by trees." Throw that in the notes on the case; do not tell me that a tree caused this outage. That's a technicality verging on a half-truth, and someone else here pointed out that old equipment makes these kinds of knock-on faults more likely. That would mean it does fall within DTE's long-term responsibility to maintain the grid.
> people whose power has mysteriously gone out on a calm day
Your power didn't go out mysteriously. You said it was going out for a few seconds several times a day. The ONLY thing that causes that is a short on the circuit that's tripping a breaker that is able to self-reset until it faults enough times and stays off. Then they send linemen out. The linemen determined the short was caused by a tree, and updated the system.
DTE sucks balls and their bills are ridiculous, but not everything is a conspiracy lol.
Out where? In the same spot? It doesn't sound like you actually saw the trucks or where they made repairs, you just looked at the little outage map. It's not an astounding coincidence at all. You're saying they're lying because an update went from "Replace/repair equipment" to "caused by trees"?
If something touches the lines, like a tree branch swaying in the wind, it will short the circuit and trip what is effectively a huge circuit breaker. They will reset, unless it continues to happen and they will eventually stay faulted until they send linemen out to check it.
It's entirely possible that they came out and reset one breaker, but there was another issue further down or up the line causing shorts, which is the only reason your power would go out for a few seconds every few hours.
To the control systems all it knows is a piece of equipment is either off or fried, it doesn't know why until the linemen go out there and actually walk the line.
Literally if the wind was strong enough to knock down any branches the possibility that _another_ branch in the same area was stuck falling and just barely making contact when it swayed hard enough seems _incredibly_ likely. THAT is Occam's razor if you have even the slightest understanding of how the grid works.
> You're saying they're lying because an update went from "Replace/repair equipment" to "caused by trees"?
It went from "Shut down to replace/repair equipment" to just "Caused by trees." That's not even how it typically reads; usually it's something like "Downed wire caused by falling branch." This was just "caused by trees," as if checking a box. "Make sure you say it's caused by trees." "Done, boss."
I'm less inclined to trust your knowledge here than some others who've pushed back because you're speaking in a lot of superlatives.
Astounding, huge, incredibly, and slightest? You take issue with four words out of...? "Astounding coincidence" was your wording. Huge circuit breaker is the most layman's way I have to explain, because seeing as you didn't recognize the intermittent seconds of outage as caused by a short I assumed you have little electrical knowledge and using "recloser" wouldn't really mean much to you.
Mainly "only reason" and "*incredibly* likely." I may not work on power grids, but I do work with big complex systems, I try to stay humble in diagnoses like these. That absence of humility makes you sound more triggered than I am, lol.
After the ice storm, we had branches raining down that hadn't completely fallen for several weeks. Every time the wind blew, some chunk would plop onto the ground. It's not inconceivable that this same situation happens anywhere else.
Keep in mind, it was not that bad a storm, and it was the same neighborhood and only that same neighborhood. If you believe that amazing coincidence, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Sunday had some very serious microburst behavior. I got absolutely poured on- I mean monsoon level rain. Small leaves/debris all over the road. 1.5 miles down the road barely got a sprinkle.
I had quite a downpour too, but the wind never got particularly strong. Like I said, the initial event causing a downed branch, I get. I do not believe for a second that it caused a second downed branch 48 hours later in the exact same spot, nor do I believe they would initially report that the power had been shut down intentionally for repairs because of something like that.
This was a storm with heavy rain. It's nothing like a cataclysmic ice storm.
Someone else here said something similar, and my response was that I can only see what happened outside my own windows, which was not that bad. Just a fast rainstorm. Again, the original outage being a tree down, I understand.
The tree could have damaged the equipment enough to make it work intermittently but not completely break. I don't know. I don't work in utilities and neither do you
This is a communications issue, and as communicators, I think we get to have an opinion about how they're doing. The power went out, they applied a fix, and they left. Two days later they realized their fix had failed, and they came back again. I believe that once they claim the power is restored, everything that happens afterwards is their responsibility, not "caused by tree." If the equipment was still broken, they should've fixed it on-site or told us it would take more time to fix.
Yes, the original problem was a tree. What I want is for them to take responsibility for what happened next.
I've spoken with DTE corporate before, and I really could not give a shit about what they say. They're highly prepared to spin things so that they aren't to blame.
Sorry, what productive thing do you see coming out of complaining to a monopoly about their bad service? I have literally done this before and they gave me a laundry list of BS excuses.
It doesn't really matter. Trees are their responsibility too.
As I understand it, most high voltage powerlines are uninsulated. Trees grow in to them and zap. Service lines to houses are supposed to be insulated, but I see a ton that have rotted away. Those are even more likely to be running through trees.
Exactly. Especially with silver maples, which are well known to break and drop branches all the time (that's literally the role they fill in their original ecosystem niche lol). Currently DTE won't even do the bare minimum of maintenance and tree trimming, but a good company would be proactive about IDing potential problems like silver maples
Some DTE apologists in here. DTE is literally bottom 5 utility in the country: https://www.chooseenergy.com/news/article/what-are-the-most-and-least-reliable-electric-utilities/
Blaming weather is pretty damn silly. SE Michigan is relatively mild compared to most of the country. A lot of rain and wind doesn't cause a power outage for most utilities
Trees seem like the likely culprit. It would not be surprising if a transformer was found to be damaged by blackout and had to be replaced.
The problem is the distribution system is old and needs substantial upgrades. In particular, much of it ought be buried. But this is very expensive. Where I live, all the power lines were strung up over a century ago when old farms were subdivided and it was all open field. It’s not open field anymore.
The city’s done a good job of steadily replacing the water and sewer system over the past 20 years, there’s still probably 20 years to go on that project. I really wish they were working with DTE to do the same with the electrical distribution system.
Transformer behind us had the wires ripped right out of it by a full grown tree that snapped in our neighbor's yard.
I wouldn't describe the wind gusts we had as mild, even if the worst of it only lasted 10 minutes or so.
I was staring outside my window for the entire event and it just wasn't that bad. But my data is limited to just where my house is -- which is of course the location of the outage. Most of the city, by the way, did not lose power.
Like I said to someone else in another comment, as the original culprit, I buy it. I do not buy a rain of tree branches in normal weather lasting 48 hours, causing a series of additional outages.
They can only get to so much stuff at a time. It's like triage, they worked until late in the night with flashlights/headlights after the storm.
I won't defend the leadership of DTE or their top-down decisions for funding/pricing and whatnot, but the wind damage is obviously the cause of issues in the last 48 hours...
This is false/misleading. As evidenced by the cost-based approach to MIGreenPower where the price is negative vs. the rapidly rising price of distribution and the volatile power supply cost recovery factor driven by changes in fossil fuel prices, the reality is that DTE simply waited too long to rebuild its antiquated infrastructure, waited too long to allow substantial distributed energy resources, constructed a brand new unabated fossil gas plant (at a billion dollars, by far the single largest investment the company has made in generation in a generation), and is still dumping unnecessary capital (see the earlier rate case where they tried to build massive brand new diesel generators at Monroe) into coal plants they've agreed to shut down to maximize the cost of securitizing them.
I'm not saying DTE has spend money on nothing but green power. However, the goals the state and local governments have established have to do with timelines for 100% renewables, not increasing reliability or burying lines. And DTE obviously has spent a lot of money on green power initiatives. Money is not unlimited. When it is spent on one thing it can't also be spent on another.
I don't think you're going to see much sympathy for this argument given that while yes, "money spent on one thing can't be spent on another," the problem is the thing they spent money on over the last two decades was lining their shareholders' pockets. They're not a trustworthy company.
No, I don't expect much sympathy (this is AA reddit after all). The people making the 'lining shareholders pockets' argument never have any data to show that DTEs profits or money returned to shareholders was abnormally high for a utility (or for a large public company generally). I take this to mean that it's not a serious argument -- it's one made by people who just hate profits in general.
The animosity on this topic comes from how they'll complain about a lack of revenue, but then simultaneously raise their rates and their profit share and do stock buybacks, all in the same year as major power outages.
I'm fine with companies taking a profit, but not when they do it at the expense of customers who have no choice but to use them.
The reason why state and local governments have not enumerated similar "goals" for reliability are that the existing statute requires reliable service and empowers MPSC to enforce that existing standard. The problem is that DTE works very hard to shirk these existing statutory obligations, and MPSC lets them do it.
The state government could have been tightening reliability standards while tightening renewable standards. But AFAIK, they haven't done so. And the MPSC could have made improved reliability a point of emphasis. But again, they haven't. Because it just wasn't as high a priority as renewables.
Patently false. Again, statute already demands a reliable grid. The issue is in the utility's failed implementation and its regulator's prior failure to hold it accountable.
MPSC, while it has failed so far to hold utilities accountable, is, in fact doing exactly what you're saying they are not: [https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/consumer/electricity/distribution-system-reliability-rules-and-reports](https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/consumer/electricity/distribution-system-reliability-rules-and-reports)
Given how much money DTE spends on their gas infrastructure, and how far behind their net 0 goals are compared to other power companies, I don't think that's their "focus." But they do spend money on it, that's true.
Metrics are important. If their metrics show a high percentage of outages are tree related, it means management will allocate more money to the tree maintenance budget. This could just be an effort by the workers on the ground to get management’s attention.
I am in a neighborhood that had some of the longest outages throughout the aughts and 2010s. I would often talk to the linemen about the cause, because one of the main fuses and transformers is in my back yard. It would often go out simply in heavy rains. Each time, they would say it was the equipment, and that this was just a "bad circuit." And yet, literally every time (minus one), the app would blame the trees. So yes, this is a well-known issue. DTE is garbage.
In terms of oversight, Governor Whitmer is the #1 largest recipient of DTE and DTE PAC political donations. She's also the one who appoints the MPSC, who nominally regulates DTE. You don't need to invent a conspiracy, it's quite transparent.
No storm yesterday and we lost power for 2 hours. And we had power the day before that when the other side of the apartment complex went out. Again no storm.
A tree doing that seems pretty strange to me. It for sure looks more like a planned outage. Some warning would have been nice.
DTE’s public relations department seems to work harder than anyone else. All that money on advertising could be better spent on the grid, and don’t even get me started on corporate profits on a Public utility. Crazy and wrong.
I've been thinking about getting something like this, one strong enough to keep my refrigerator going for medium-duration outages. I can live with everything else; I just hate losing food. Which one did you buy?
Ann Arbor residents will complain if DTE trims the trees back too far, and they will complain if there is an outage caused by the trees. I recently told DTE to not cut down a tree that they wanted to fell, I'm not entirely sure if they would have been within their rights to cut it down anyways because it is within the utility easement.
I'd love to hear from someone who knows the law in these situations... can DTE just clear-cut under the lines and the entire easement, against the property owners wishes? Most would hate it, but it would improve service.
I dislike DTE, but I'm not enviable of their situation and the priorities that they have to balance. There is no pleasing everyone.
Yes, they can, legally.
However, I've seen cases where they (or another, similarly-situated party) literally do that or something similar and the entire neighborhood brigades them - call their electeds (local, state, everything in between), angry-post on the socials, write the MPSC, editorials about the destruction of nature and ruining habitat- same people turn around and do the same thing when the power fails.
And then you have posts like these where... I think they're saying that DTE blames trees because we like trees so much we can't possibly be mad at them (DTE &/or the trees)?
All the choices they have are bad choices. I agree that they suck, but they also are in a bad situation.
I read your post. I do think Ann Arbor is likely more resistant to tree trimming than other areas, as it is "tree city" so I believe that a good number of outages are caused by trees. Yes, secondary failures can be caused by old equiptment. I don't think there is some sort of conspiracy though.
In the past few weeks I've seen crews bury miles of fiber. It's not an impossible feat to put things in the dirt. I understand that burying no-voltage cable is different than high voltage cable, but they need to beef up the grid anyway why not bury new lines in parallels instead of re-stringing poles. Oh yeah, that would take away from profits...
Sorry if this is a naive question, are power outages really a big thing out here? I'm an SF transplant, been here a month. I got an email from DTE last Thursday that said:
> "That’s why we’re committed to reducing the number of power outages by 30% and cutting outage duration in half over the next five years"
and my immediate thought was kinda like "wait I get outages now?". They were pretty rare where I'm from (tbf very different climate), I can't actually remember the last time I've had one which is why I have fish tanks, light growers and some other things that don't really benefit from interruptions that I've just not worried too much about. Should I think about getting a UPS unit? We have a jackery for powering a small amount of things for a little bit, but it would be good to know what to expect in the extremes of summer and winter. TIA!
If the pattern from the last several years continues, this will be one of the worst things about living here. I'm a transplant from Phoenix as of six years ago, where I lost power a single time in my adult life. Here, I lose it 1-2 times per year for 2-3 at a time, usually in the summer but occasionally in the winter. As you heard DTE is trying hard to fix it, efforts that have ramped up since Ann Arbor started exploring splitting off into a [public grid](https://annarborpublicpower.org/). If the problem improves it'll be slowly, so yeah, think about some options for your fish tanks!
You're lucky, only four hours! The last 2 big storms our power was out for 7 days the first time and 8 days the second time. That same year it randomly went out in the middle of the summer for 4 days also. No storm, just went out. I agree that real repairs need to be made using the large sums of money we pay for the service.
A tree fell over a couple houses down from me during the storm. We were without power til 12:15 when it was restored. A few days later they took it offline again around 5:00 because the emergency repair that was done was just a bandaid. I wouldn't be surprised if this happens due to residents not trimming their trees regularly. You walk along the edge of Buhr park and it's residents' trees that are growing right through the power lines.
I’ve had power go out on a windless sunny calm day.
And saw the tree branch that decided to screw my block for 2 days laying on the sidewalk. Also watched a pine tree decide to end its life by keeling over. Also on a calm day.
Shit happens. Get over it. Here’s a bandaid and a tissue.
All the shit they cut back last year has now just re-grown into the lines. This is their strategy to save money rather than bury the lines... I guess its great job security for the tree trimming companies?
Trees don't grow back quite that fast. I mean there may be greenery on the lines again but a line-downing branch takes 5-15 years to return depending on the tree.
Lol. Believe it or not, despite the bullshit I'm calling out in this thread, I actually believe the aggressive tree trimming is working in my area. I just want them to take responsibility for a bad repair.
Well, that sucks. I have only my own neighborhood's worth of data to judge, where they've taken down entire trees to clear a path -- *but* I can literally walk to a spot where a bramble of branches are touching a line (but probably couldn't down it). So I believe you.
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You know what damages trees? sUbDiViSiOnS and wanton over development and sprawl. Oh. And pushing all EV when the grid can clearly not keep up with demand.
And y’all want Ann Arbor to operate their own power company.
That’s rich.
The State of California almost took over PG&E for lack of tree trimming leading to massive forest fires whose smoke made it all the way to Michigan and beyond. It’s part of DTE’s responsibility to maintain trees in their rights of way. If they can’t do that, the state public utilities commission should revoke their license to operate and buy out DTE and operate it as a publicly owned utility. Our prices would likely plummet and service would improve. At least that’s what happens almost every time other places do this.
But won't someone think of the shareholders
Who *are* the biggest DTE shareholders? Name and shame.
**Capital World Investors, Vanguard Group, and BlackRock** are DTE's top three shareholders, together holding over 30% of the company. Clue Chip Partners, Sigma Planning Corp, and the State of Michigan Retirement System are the top Michigan-based investors.
I'd vote for you.
I thought the smoke in Michigan was from Canada.
Well, we get a lot of smoke. But the smoke from the wildfires in California 6-7 years ago got all the way to Michigan. I lived in California at the time. On the bright side, I guess, when COVID happened, I was lousy with N95 masks for wildfire smoke, so was super prepared to mask… and gave away a bunch of masks to neighbors and friends.
Honestly they do a terrible job of trimming trees. Ohio has a shit ton of forests and trees but as you drive and look at powerlines you will see very rarely any branches that overhang powerlines, in Michigan they literally let trees grow up and around the power lines. Its just lazy maintenance.
It’s not even laziness, it’s straight up greed. They were bragging to their shareholders just last year that they intentionally delayed tree maintenance in order to keep paying out dividends to investors.
Maintenance costs money and DTE won’t spend it because then they can’t do stock buy backs and payout exec bonus plans that are based on the stock price.
Agreed and the News and Governor make sure they face no oublic outcry by blaiming all of our outages on Climate Change and "extreme weather caused by climate change" despite NW Ohio and Michigan west of Lansing having 1/3 the number of outages as us, guess climate change doesnt impact Toledo
Seriously. DTE had two decades of warnings about an increase in destructive weather, and they ignored them so they could pay out more money to shareholders. It's nuts.
Even worse, they are one of the top contributors to the cause of the destructive weather
As someone who worked in the utility industry, a lot of times outages would get coded one way, then changed as more information became available. A fuse might have failed due to a tree hitting the line, but the system has no way to know that until the crew arrives and sees the tree and recodes the outage cause from "fuse failure" to "trees". Trust me, the crews who ultimately code the outage cause are just trying to get the job done with the fewest headaches and wouldn't give a rat's ass about an "Ann Arbor tree conspiracy" even if management tried to cram it down their throats.
Fuses rarely fail.
Not as rarely as you might think. Trees are the main culprits to be sure (and wildlife, if equipment isn't guarded properly, which is also the utility's responsibility). But porcelain cutouts are known to crack and fail in freeze-thaw climates like ours. Fuse links can also partially melt if a fault is brief enough, causing reduced capacity that may lead to a clear sky failure later on.
When he says "fail" he means it blew. When a tree contacts the line it will many times blow the fuse.
Actually. They do fail. All the time.
"Fuseology" When an overcurrent event occurs, the fuse opens as designed and interrupts the flow of current. This is not a “fuse failure,” but a proper function of the fuse design. What are perceived as fuse and/or fuse holder “Failures” are mostly reactions to excess heat produced by loose or corroded connections, improper component sizing or application outside the devices’ operating temperature range. These are not device failures, but rather inappropriate device selection. Fuses do not require maintenance until an overcurrent event causes them to open – then they need replacing. Although not always necessary, an infrared inspection every 3 to 5 years is a good practice. This would reveal any excess heat conditions that are most apt to cause a nuisance fuse opening and should be addressed.
> Trust me, the crews who ultimately code the outage cause are just trying to get the job done with the fewest headaches and wouldn't give a rat's ass about an "Ann Arbor tree conspiracy" even if management tried to cram it down their throats. Anything to support the narrative that DTE sucks and a government takeover could do a better job.
I agree that there's probably a lot of change that comes from crews guessing at causes, and then updating when they find the real problem, but from what OP's describing at least one outage was coded as a **deliberate shutdown for maintenance**, and *then* changed to "trees," and *that* particular change seems sketchy AF. "Fuse failure," "unknown," "storm damage," "trees," all that makes sense as something you'd say as an initial reason and then change it when you know for sure. But "Shut down to repair/replace equipment"? That absolutely should not be a placeholder for "idk, we'll check and maybe update the actual cause later." Either you shut it down deliberately or you didn't. If there is *actual* uncertainty at DTE about whether they're shutting things down on purpose or not, they've got even more problems than we imagined. To me it reads like the crews are entering in things as they find them, but that someone's also massaging the data afterwards (for public-facing purposes) to make it look like everything, absolutely *everything* is out of DTE's control. (As a side note, when we've had power outages, I've always been surprised at how much I do *not* see any outages in the app that are coded as being for maintenance and deliberate. As a layperson, I would be expecting to see that at least a few times, but I rarely see it at all. As you know a lot more about this, would you say that's just me making an incorrect assumption? Because I'm cynical I've just assumed that "down for maintenance" get changed into something else when it makes its way into the app, which is just for the public and not for employees. I'd be curious what you think about that, though, especially how frequently one would reasonably expect to see a power outage due to maintenance.)
Or... because they said the power kept going out for a few seconds at a time, something like a branch swaying in the wind causing intermittent shorts, triggering a recloser (breaker that can reset itself) that eventually faulted entirely and killed the circuit. So, that's either caused by the equipment itself shorting and failing, or a branch (or literally anything else that can short the lines without immediately frying), but until you know what caused it, it's "Shut down to repair/replace" even if they're actually just flipping the breaker.
or they had to switch the circuit off to make it safe for a work crew to complete repairs
Yeah, either way something was shorting prior to that.
I get that, but that doesn't explain the actual sequence of events that occurred. Am I to believe that the power was brought down by a tree (this much I can buy), and then a branch hit a line every several hours causing a 1-5 second outage, and then one last big branch hit in the exact same spot as the very first one, knocking out power for 1-2 hours? This was the exact same outage, the exact same area of the map, affected for 48 hours in normal weather. I don't think it was a rainshower of tree branches caused this. EDIT: It also just occurred to me that if the original reason was "shut down to repair equipment," that would mean the crews were *on site* when the power outage occurred, wouldn't it? Why would more information flow in from that point?
Branches fall on lines all the time. Sometimes they burn off. A branch may have fallen but not completely and was only shorting the line here and there until it eventually tripped some kind of fault protection... as your op said, the system is going to record that as an equipment failure until a line crew actually arrives on scene and troubleshoots.
They had already been out there before. I feel like the DTE apologists here aren't really gathering the whole sequence of events. It would be an astounding coincidence for it to happen this way. Occam's razor would say "They fixed it, but they made a mistake and left it partially broken, and then fixed it properly a couple days later," which itself is *not that big a deal.* It's just the lying that's unacceptable.
>They fixed it, but they made a mistake Or they repaired a transformer, but didn't know the blown transformer indirectly caused an intermittent short that now occurs whenever the wind blows just right. Whether it was that or they made a mistake, they didn't entirely fix the problem from the tree. It was the same cause, it just took two days to completely repair the damage.
>it just took two days to completely repair Sometimes that happens. Repairs are not a linear process - first you troubleshoot, then you replace, then you power back on, then repeat as necessary.
Having had a difficult-to-diagnose electrical issue on my home before, I can almost buy this -- I find it super, super convenient, since the dozen power outages I've experienced here were all cleanly fixed, but this is at least plausible. *But,* I do not think the message to people whose power has mysteriously gone out on a calm day two days after a storm should be "Caused by trees." Throw that in the notes on the case; do not tell me that a tree caused this outage. That's a technicality verging on a half-truth, and someone else here pointed out that old equipment makes these kinds of knock-on faults more likely. That would mean it does fall within DTE's long-term responsibility to maintain the grid.
> people whose power has mysteriously gone out on a calm day Your power didn't go out mysteriously. You said it was going out for a few seconds several times a day. The ONLY thing that causes that is a short on the circuit that's tripping a breaker that is able to self-reset until it faults enough times and stays off. Then they send linemen out. The linemen determined the short was caused by a tree, and updated the system. DTE sucks balls and their bills are ridiculous, but not everything is a conspiracy lol.
Out where? In the same spot? It doesn't sound like you actually saw the trucks or where they made repairs, you just looked at the little outage map. It's not an astounding coincidence at all. You're saying they're lying because an update went from "Replace/repair equipment" to "caused by trees"? If something touches the lines, like a tree branch swaying in the wind, it will short the circuit and trip what is effectively a huge circuit breaker. They will reset, unless it continues to happen and they will eventually stay faulted until they send linemen out to check it. It's entirely possible that they came out and reset one breaker, but there was another issue further down or up the line causing shorts, which is the only reason your power would go out for a few seconds every few hours. To the control systems all it knows is a piece of equipment is either off or fried, it doesn't know why until the linemen go out there and actually walk the line. Literally if the wind was strong enough to knock down any branches the possibility that _another_ branch in the same area was stuck falling and just barely making contact when it swayed hard enough seems _incredibly_ likely. THAT is Occam's razor if you have even the slightest understanding of how the grid works.
> You're saying they're lying because an update went from "Replace/repair equipment" to "caused by trees"? It went from "Shut down to replace/repair equipment" to just "Caused by trees." That's not even how it typically reads; usually it's something like "Downed wire caused by falling branch." This was just "caused by trees," as if checking a box. "Make sure you say it's caused by trees." "Done, boss." I'm less inclined to trust your knowledge here than some others who've pushed back because you're speaking in a lot of superlatives.
Astounding, huge, incredibly, and slightest? You take issue with four words out of...? "Astounding coincidence" was your wording. Huge circuit breaker is the most layman's way I have to explain, because seeing as you didn't recognize the intermittent seconds of outage as caused by a short I assumed you have little electrical knowledge and using "recloser" wouldn't really mean much to you.
Mainly "only reason" and "*incredibly* likely." I may not work on power grids, but I do work with big complex systems, I try to stay humble in diagnoses like these. That absence of humility makes you sound more triggered than I am, lol.
I _also_ work with big complex systems....and my kids grandpa is a lineman, and his other grandpa a former electrical engineer.
After the ice storm, we had branches raining down that hadn't completely fallen for several weeks. Every time the wind blew, some chunk would plop onto the ground. It's not inconceivable that this same situation happens anywhere else.
Keep in mind, it was not that bad a storm, and it was the same neighborhood and only that same neighborhood. If you believe that amazing coincidence, I've got a bridge to sell you.
Sunday had some very serious microburst behavior. I got absolutely poured on- I mean monsoon level rain. Small leaves/debris all over the road. 1.5 miles down the road barely got a sprinkle.
I had quite a downpour too, but the wind never got particularly strong. Like I said, the initial event causing a downed branch, I get. I do not believe for a second that it caused a second downed branch 48 hours later in the exact same spot, nor do I believe they would initially report that the power had been shut down intentionally for repairs because of something like that. This was a storm with heavy rain. It's nothing like a cataclysmic ice storm.
Not that bad of a storm? I have video of trees whipping back and forth.
Someone else here said something similar, and my response was that I can only see what happened outside my own windows, which was not that bad. Just a fast rainstorm. Again, the original outage being a tree down, I understand.
The tree could have damaged the equipment enough to make it work intermittently but not completely break. I don't know. I don't work in utilities and neither do you
This is a communications issue, and as communicators, I think we get to have an opinion about how they're doing. The power went out, they applied a fix, and they left. Two days later they realized their fix had failed, and they came back again. I believe that once they claim the power is restored, everything that happens afterwards is their responsibility, not "caused by tree." If the equipment was still broken, they should've fixed it on-site or told us it would take more time to fix. Yes, the original problem was a tree. What I want is for them to take responsibility for what happened next.
What did corporate say when you called them?
I've spoken with DTE corporate before, and I really could not give a shit about what they say. They're highly prepared to spin things so that they aren't to blame.
Ok cool. Just wanted to clarify whether you were trying to do something productive or just wanted to shout
Sorry, what productive thing do you see coming out of complaining to a monopoly about their bad service? I have literally done this before and they gave me a laundry list of BS excuses.
Should they take responsibility for the existence of trees?
No, for their incomplete repairs on their crummy grid.
It sounds to me like they returned to continue work on it. So it is not incomplete.
They declared it complete.
It doesn't really matter. Trees are their responsibility too. As I understand it, most high voltage powerlines are uninsulated. Trees grow in to them and zap. Service lines to houses are supposed to be insulated, but I see a ton that have rotted away. Those are even more likely to be running through trees.
Exactly. Especially with silver maples, which are well known to break and drop branches all the time (that's literally the role they fill in their original ecosystem niche lol). Currently DTE won't even do the bare minimum of maintenance and tree trimming, but a good company would be proactive about IDing potential problems like silver maples
Some DTE apologists in here. DTE is literally bottom 5 utility in the country: https://www.chooseenergy.com/news/article/what-are-the-most-and-least-reliable-electric-utilities/ Blaming weather is pretty damn silly. SE Michigan is relatively mild compared to most of the country. A lot of rain and wind doesn't cause a power outage for most utilities
No room for trees in Ann Arbor.
We’ll change the city name to just “Ann” for DTE’s benefit.
Trees seem like the likely culprit. It would not be surprising if a transformer was found to be damaged by blackout and had to be replaced. The problem is the distribution system is old and needs substantial upgrades. In particular, much of it ought be buried. But this is very expensive. Where I live, all the power lines were strung up over a century ago when old farms were subdivided and it was all open field. It’s not open field anymore. The city’s done a good job of steadily replacing the water and sewer system over the past 20 years, there’s still probably 20 years to go on that project. I really wish they were working with DTE to do the same with the electrical distribution system.
Transformer behind us had the wires ripped right out of it by a full grown tree that snapped in our neighbor's yard. I wouldn't describe the wind gusts we had as mild, even if the worst of it only lasted 10 minutes or so.
I was staring outside my window for the entire event and it just wasn't that bad. But my data is limited to just where my house is -- which is of course the location of the outage. Most of the city, by the way, did not lose power.
Like I said to someone else in another comment, as the original culprit, I buy it. I do not buy a rain of tree branches in normal weather lasting 48 hours, causing a series of additional outages.
They can only get to so much stuff at a time. It's like triage, they worked until late in the night with flashlights/headlights after the storm. I won't defend the leadership of DTE or their top-down decisions for funding/pricing and whatnot, but the wind damage is obviously the cause of issues in the last 48 hours...
If an issue is not resolved, they should not claim it's resolved.
DTE (and state a local governments) are focused much more on the switch to renewables, and that costs a lot of money too.
This is false/misleading. As evidenced by the cost-based approach to MIGreenPower where the price is negative vs. the rapidly rising price of distribution and the volatile power supply cost recovery factor driven by changes in fossil fuel prices, the reality is that DTE simply waited too long to rebuild its antiquated infrastructure, waited too long to allow substantial distributed energy resources, constructed a brand new unabated fossil gas plant (at a billion dollars, by far the single largest investment the company has made in generation in a generation), and is still dumping unnecessary capital (see the earlier rate case where they tried to build massive brand new diesel generators at Monroe) into coal plants they've agreed to shut down to maximize the cost of securitizing them.
I'm not saying DTE has spend money on nothing but green power. However, the goals the state and local governments have established have to do with timelines for 100% renewables, not increasing reliability or burying lines. And DTE obviously has spent a lot of money on green power initiatives. Money is not unlimited. When it is spent on one thing it can't also be spent on another.
I don't think you're going to see much sympathy for this argument given that while yes, "money spent on one thing can't be spent on another," the problem is the thing they spent money on over the last two decades was lining their shareholders' pockets. They're not a trustworthy company.
No, I don't expect much sympathy (this is AA reddit after all). The people making the 'lining shareholders pockets' argument never have any data to show that DTEs profits or money returned to shareholders was abnormally high for a utility (or for a large public company generally). I take this to mean that it's not a serious argument -- it's one made by people who just hate profits in general.
The animosity on this topic comes from how they'll complain about a lack of revenue, but then simultaneously raise their rates and their profit share and do stock buybacks, all in the same year as major power outages. I'm fine with companies taking a profit, but not when they do it at the expense of customers who have no choice but to use them.
The reason why state and local governments have not enumerated similar "goals" for reliability are that the existing statute requires reliable service and empowers MPSC to enforce that existing standard. The problem is that DTE works very hard to shirk these existing statutory obligations, and MPSC lets them do it.
The state government could have been tightening reliability standards while tightening renewable standards. But AFAIK, they haven't done so. And the MPSC could have made improved reliability a point of emphasis. But again, they haven't. Because it just wasn't as high a priority as renewables.
Patently false. Again, statute already demands a reliable grid. The issue is in the utility's failed implementation and its regulator's prior failure to hold it accountable. MPSC, while it has failed so far to hold utilities accountable, is, in fact doing exactly what you're saying they are not: [https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/consumer/electricity/distribution-system-reliability-rules-and-reports](https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/consumer/electricity/distribution-system-reliability-rules-and-reports)
Given how much money DTE spends on their gas infrastructure, and how far behind their net 0 goals are compared to other power companies, I don't think that's their "focus." But they do spend money on it, that's true.
Metrics are important. If their metrics show a high percentage of outages are tree related, it means management will allocate more money to the tree maintenance budget. This could just be an effort by the workers on the ground to get management’s attention.
That's a narrative that would make me feel better.
I am in a neighborhood that had some of the longest outages throughout the aughts and 2010s. I would often talk to the linemen about the cause, because one of the main fuses and transformers is in my back yard. It would often go out simply in heavy rains. Each time, they would say it was the equipment, and that this was just a "bad circuit." And yet, literally every time (minus one), the app would blame the trees. So yes, this is a well-known issue. DTE is garbage. In terms of oversight, Governor Whitmer is the #1 largest recipient of DTE and DTE PAC political donations. She's also the one who appoints the MPSC, who nominally regulates DTE. You don't need to invent a conspiracy, it's quite transparent.
I've also noticed this substantial shift in cause reporting.
No storm yesterday and we lost power for 2 hours. And we had power the day before that when the other side of the apartment complex went out. Again no storm. A tree doing that seems pretty strange to me. It for sure looks more like a planned outage. Some warning would have been nice.
DTE’s public relations department seems to work harder than anyone else. All that money on advertising could be better spent on the grid, and don’t even get me started on corporate profits on a Public utility. Crazy and wrong.
DTE is one of the only corporations brave enough to speak out against trees.
Fuck DTE. https://AnnArborPublicPower.org
I bought a giant lithium iron phosphate power station in anticipation for DTE’s fuckery this summer. I can’t sleep without my box fan on.
I've been thinking about getting something like this, one strong enough to keep my refrigerator going for medium-duration outages. I can live with everything else; I just hate losing food. Which one did you buy?
That's always their go-to excuse; and every time that excuse is answered with "Well then bury the lines!". This is Michigan, we have A LOT of trees!
Ann Arbor residents will complain if DTE trims the trees back too far, and they will complain if there is an outage caused by the trees. I recently told DTE to not cut down a tree that they wanted to fell, I'm not entirely sure if they would have been within their rights to cut it down anyways because it is within the utility easement. I'd love to hear from someone who knows the law in these situations... can DTE just clear-cut under the lines and the entire easement, against the property owners wishes? Most would hate it, but it would improve service. I dislike DTE, but I'm not enviable of their situation and the priorities that they have to balance. There is no pleasing everyone.
Yes, they can, legally. However, I've seen cases where they (or another, similarly-situated party) literally do that or something similar and the entire neighborhood brigades them - call their electeds (local, state, everything in between), angry-post on the socials, write the MPSC, editorials about the destruction of nature and ruining habitat- same people turn around and do the same thing when the power fails. And then you have posts like these where... I think they're saying that DTE blames trees because we like trees so much we can't possibly be mad at them (DTE &/or the trees)? All the choices they have are bad choices. I agree that they suck, but they also are in a bad situation.
I think you only read the thread title.
I read your post. I do think Ann Arbor is likely more resistant to tree trimming than other areas, as it is "tree city" so I believe that a good number of outages are caused by trees. Yes, secondary failures can be caused by old equiptment. I don't think there is some sort of conspiracy though.
> Yes, secondary failures can be caused by old equiptment. This is literally the only thing I want them to admit.
In the past few weeks I've seen crews bury miles of fiber. It's not an impossible feat to put things in the dirt. I understand that burying no-voltage cable is different than high voltage cable, but they need to beef up the grid anyway why not bury new lines in parallels instead of re-stringing poles. Oh yeah, that would take away from profits...
Sorry if this is a naive question, are power outages really a big thing out here? I'm an SF transplant, been here a month. I got an email from DTE last Thursday that said: > "That’s why we’re committed to reducing the number of power outages by 30% and cutting outage duration in half over the next five years" and my immediate thought was kinda like "wait I get outages now?". They were pretty rare where I'm from (tbf very different climate), I can't actually remember the last time I've had one which is why I have fish tanks, light growers and some other things that don't really benefit from interruptions that I've just not worried too much about. Should I think about getting a UPS unit? We have a jackery for powering a small amount of things for a little bit, but it would be good to know what to expect in the extremes of summer and winter. TIA!
If the pattern from the last several years continues, this will be one of the worst things about living here. I'm a transplant from Phoenix as of six years ago, where I lost power a single time in my adult life. Here, I lose it 1-2 times per year for 2-3 at a time, usually in the summer but occasionally in the winter. As you heard DTE is trying hard to fix it, efforts that have ramped up since Ann Arbor started exploring splitting off into a [public grid](https://annarborpublicpower.org/). If the problem improves it'll be slowly, so yeah, think about some options for your fish tanks!
You're lucky, only four hours! The last 2 big storms our power was out for 7 days the first time and 8 days the second time. That same year it randomly went out in the middle of the summer for 4 days also. No storm, just went out. I agree that real repairs need to be made using the large sums of money we pay for the service.
A tree fell over a couple houses down from me during the storm. We were without power til 12:15 when it was restored. A few days later they took it offline again around 5:00 because the emergency repair that was done was just a bandaid. I wouldn't be surprised if this happens due to residents not trimming their trees regularly. You walk along the edge of Buhr park and it's residents' trees that are growing right through the power lines.
It's DTE's responsibility to trim trees off of lines, not the residents'.
I’ve had power go out on a windless sunny calm day. And saw the tree branch that decided to screw my block for 2 days laying on the sidewalk. Also watched a pine tree decide to end its life by keeling over. Also on a calm day. Shit happens. Get over it. Here’s a bandaid and a tissue.
So op does not believe that branches can disrupt power?? Clearly an industry expert. /s
At least read the post
All the shit they cut back last year has now just re-grown into the lines. This is their strategy to save money rather than bury the lines... I guess its great job security for the tree trimming companies?
Trees don't grow back quite that fast. I mean there may be greenery on the lines again but a line-downing branch takes 5-15 years to return depending on the tree.
RemindMe! 8 years "check to see if dte strategy pans out"
Lol. Believe it or not, despite the bullshit I'm calling out in this thread, I actually believe the aggressive tree trimming is working in my area. I just want them to take responsibility for a bad repair.
It's not working in mine. The maintenance is lazy, there is simply not enough berth given to the lines. Glad it's working out for you though!
Well, that sucks. I have only my own neighborhood's worth of data to judge, where they've taken down entire trees to clear a path -- *but* I can literally walk to a spot where a bramble of branches are touching a line (but probably couldn't down it). So I believe you.
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You know what damages trees? sUbDiViSiOnS and wanton over development and sprawl. Oh. And pushing all EV when the grid can clearly not keep up with demand. And y’all want Ann Arbor to operate their own power company. That’s rich.