DETROIT – The CEO of DTE Energy opened up to Local 4 News about customer frustrations after hundreds of thousands of people went several days without power following an ice storm.
CEO Jerry Norcia said 98% of DTE Energy customers who lost power during last month’s storm had it restored by the end of the weekend, but acknowledged it was unacceptable that some outages lasted into the following week.
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“We had about 14,000-15,000 customers that rolled into Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday,” Norcia said. “I just have to say to my customers, that’s unacceptable to have that lengthy of an outage.”
He said DTE has made “tremendous investment” in the system, but that the company needs to do more.
“Even in an historic ice storm, the grid needs to stand up to these increasingly severe weather patterns,” Norcia said. “We are going to do better, we will be better, and we’re investing billions.”
Restoration timeline confusion
Many customers expressed frustration over the restoration timelines. They didn’t want to be told their power would be back by a certain time if it wasn’t coming back until later.
“We get these types of ice storms every 50-60 years, so typically, when we produce an estimate, it’s based on historic instances where we’ve had outages in so many customers and so many devices that appear disabled on this screen, and we make an estimate,” Norcia said. “When we arrive on the job and you actually see the damage, it was a lot more extensive than any of our models had predicted.”
DTE brought in 1,000 additional workers the first two days of the restoration process because the damage was worse than originally anticipated.
“When we arrived at the job, we found that it was going to take a lot longer to repair,” Norcia said. “That’s why estimates changed. Not ideal, not great for our customers, but these are very rare events that are happening more and more often.”
System improvements
After Southeast Michigan experienced significant power outages due to wind in August 2022, DTE Energy promised to make improvements that would stand up to these types of events.
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“They’re not enough yet,” Norcia said. “I think that’s the correct conclusion.”
Norcia said DTE has invested $5.5 billion in the grid over the last five years and done thousands of miles of tree trimming.
“Over the next five years, we’ll invest over $9 billion in the grid, so we are making fundamental investments to have a best-in-class grid, and what’s happening is these events that used to happen every 50 or 60 years are happening every two or three years,” Norcia said. “The weather patterns are fundamentally changing, and we started seeing this happening about 5-7 years ago, and that’s why we ramped our tree trimming by 300%. We’ve got 1,500 tree trimmers on site every day trimming trees. We’ve got over 1,000 line workers improving the infrastructure with $1.5 billion per year of capital being invested last year, and just as much this year.”
DTE believes there has been strong performance in the spots where the company has made investments. In the city of Detroit, for example, where DTE has heavily invested over the past five years, there’s been a 45% reduction in outages, according to Norcia.
Michigan’s bottom-five national ranking
Customers want to know: Since every state has dealt with increased severe weather incidents, why does Michigan have the fifth-worst efficiency and reliability when it comes to utilities?
Norcia said there are two components to reliability: the number of outages and how long it takes to restore those outages.
“From a number of outages standpoint, we’re about average in the country -- which is still not great,” Norcia said. “We don’t have the best grid in terms of the number of outages and the frequency of outages. The duration is below-average -- the amount of time that it takes to restore. Now, you might say, ‘Why is that?’ Well, about 16,000 miles of our grid is quite old, was built in the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s. Older cities like Detroit, Grosse Pointe, Royal Oak, Birmingham have a very aging set of grid equipment, and it also doesn’t have automation.”
He said once more automation is introduced, DTE can isolate outages from the control center.
“So if a tree goes down and knocks a wire down or knocks a pole down, we can isolate that location and send our crew right to the block where the issue is and restore all the other customers on either side of the outage immediately,” Norcia said. “So you turn a 1,000-customer outage that lasts six or seven hours into a 100-customer outage that lasts six or seven hours, because you restore the rest of them immediately. So that’s what’s required on the systems: automation, and we also need to upgrade the poles and wires and transformers -- 16,000 miles of it so it performs on the same level as the other 75% of our grid.”
What’s being done to prevent outages in the future?
Customers want to know what’s being done to prevent these mass outage in the future, especially heading into the spring, when more outage-causing storms are certainly possible.
“We just need to continue investing,” Norcia said. “This is going to be a long-term solution. The grid has aged over many decades, and as we tackle mile after mile of the grid and remain persistent and continue to invest, we need to invest heavily in this grid to prepare it for two things.
“One is the fact that weather patterns are worsening and attacks on our grid are becoming more and more violent from a weather perspective. But two, we’ve also got growing demand coming, which is electric vehicles. So we need to prepare for both, and that’s why these investments are fundamental in the future prosperity of Michigan. We need a reliable grid, a safe grid to ensure the future prosperity of this state.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said there needs to be some accountability when power outages last so long. Norcia was asked if she was talking about him.
“I think she’s talking about me and the entire company,” Norcia said. “We’re happy to be accountable for where me make our investments and improve the quality of the grid. Like I said, 75% of the grid operated just fine during an historic ice storm, and we need to show that the investments that we’re making are increasing the number of customers who can sustain that type of attack on the grid. And we will do that. We’re happy to do that.”
How long will it take to improve grid?
If Michigan has the fifth-worst utility reliability in the country, how long will it take to move up much higher?
“I would say that we’ve been investing heavily for the last five years, and over the next five years, I think we will climb that ladder to being at least median performance, and then we’re going to continue to build a best-in-class grid, and build a flawless grid for our customers and for the citizens of Michigan,” Norcia said. “They deserve it.”
But how long does it take?
“I would say it would take a decade to be best-in-class,” Norcia said.
Why aren’t power lines underground?
Whenever there are power outages, line placement becomes a hot topic. New builds often get their lines put in the ground, but everyone wants to know: At a certain point, doesn’t it make more sense to bury power lines underground?
“It’s a great question, and about one-third of our system is in the ground now,” Norcia said. “Two-thirds that was build before the 1960s is above ground, especially in the residential neighborhoods. All residential neighborhoods that are built today, and also commercial establishments, all go underground.
“We are looking to see: Can we bring the cost down? Because right now, putting lines underground costs multiple times more than leaving the lines up in the air. But as we rebuild this grid and really try to transform that 16,000 miles, which is the oldest part of our grid, we are looking really hard at how much of that we can put underground, and we’re going to see if we can compress the cost and get the cost down. I think the more we try and the more we do, we can find ways to make that more and more efficient.
“So we are committed to trying it and making it happen.”
Here’s the full interview with Norcia:
