DTE Energy expects to restore power to all customers by Friday following severe storms

. >> Yesterday's storms left hundreds of thousands of people in metro Detroit without power. Officials are getting ready to give an update on their response and just how long people can expect to be in the dark. That actually just got started moments ago. Let's go ahead and listen in live at an update on the weather that came across our territory yesterday and what our response has been thus far. So as we know yesterday evening we had severe weather hit southeast Michigan. That weather brought with it 70 mile an hour plus winds. In fact, we did see a reported wind gust of 76 miles an hour at Metro Airport which we haven't seen here from a straight line wind standpoint in years. >> That weather did generate around 300,000 customer outages across our entire system. So the damage was rather widespread. We had a number of individuals working through the evening last night and we have people working this morning. Thus far we've restored about 120,000 of those of those customers who were impacted. So about 3,738% thus far from a restoration rate standpoint as we look forward to today and then tomorrow, our goals are to restore 75% of those customers who were affected by the end of the day Today. And that number will move to 90% by the end of the day tomorrow. And the balance of those remaining customers would be restored by Friday. So when you think about resources in an event like this, this is really an all hands on deck approach. ADT. We have individuals from our corporate staff functions finance, legal communications. Everyone is really aligning and supporting our customers during this rather challenging time. >> We've also reached out to a number of our utility partners across the Midwest and we have over 400 crews or about 1200 1300 individual poles who are here on property Now. They've come from as far away as Wisconsin, Tennessee, New York, some of the other Midwest states as well. So this really is an all hands on deck approach to remove some of the hazards to the public but also to restore our customers in a timely, timely manner. We do recognize as well this weather event did cause a number of school outages. We have upwards of 350 schools in our service territory that are without power. So we do recognize that while people at their individual home might have power, the fact that schools might not have power does create challenges for those individuals. As I sit here now, the thing I want to make sure that everyone That is our number oneafet priority. As you can imagine, a weather event of this magnitude does bring down power lines across our service territory. >> So a couple of rules of thumb that we like to communicate. If you can stay indoors, please do so. All right. Yourself, your children, your pets, please stay indoors if at all possible. If you do have to venture outside and you come across caution tape. Please heed the warning of the caution tape itself. It is there to identify a downed power line. Please do not cross the caution tape itself. >> If you see a power line when you're outside please stay at least 25ft away from it. And if the power line is in contact with a fence or some other object do not in any way touch that object because it could be carrying some of that electricity and also generators. So we know when people do lose power they do have generators, generators can be extremely deadly due to the fumes that they emit. So please operate your generators outside. Please move them away from doors and from windows to ensure that everybody stays safe. >> So my closing remarks here would be that please understand we understand the challenges that not having electricity presents to our customer base. We are laser focused on removing safety hazards but also restoring power here over the next couple of days. And we have thousands of individuals here on our property helping to support that cause. So please be patient with us. >> Please treat the individuals out in the field with respect. They're doing a great job and very challenging conditions with the heat and some of the challenging work out there. So so please grant them some grace as they're doing their work in the field. So that will conclude my remarks. Thank you. Could you talk a little bit about some of the challenges you guys may have faced trying to keep people back on line outside of the sheer volume and how many customers without power? >> So yeah, the challenge one of the big challenges we're seeing is in some storms you will have a very localized area that loses power So you can flooded with resources in a very tight geographic footprint . This storm is not that we have devastation. The tip of the thumb down almost to the Ohio border. So we have individuals and resources scattered all over the territory to help restore power which brings a little bit of challenge with it. I would also say with the wind speed that we had the damage is significant. This is not necessarily lifting a limb off of a line and restoring power. You've got broken poles, you have broken infrastructure replacing that infrastructure can take a little bit of time and that will be a challenge as well. But we are fully committed to the work at hand and everyone's really laser focused on doing what they can to restore power as quickly as they possibly can. >> Last week you guys highlighted the smart grid technology. You guys have been investing in the Recloser technology. How did that play a factor into last night's storms and how many people were spared from losing power because of this technology? >> I haven't received the exact numbers on how many individuals were spared. But what I can say is we do have instances from the weather yesterday that these reclosers help to minimize the size of the outage because they were able to to break a circuit up into smaller pieces. So instead of the entire circuit losing power, it was a very small pocket of customers . So we do know there are thousands of individuals that we serve who did not experience an outage because of the technology. One of the other benefits of the technology is the ability from this control center that we're talking from right now where individuals here can actually press buttons and operate the devices in the field. So where we have damage they can open and close some of these devices and reroute power to energize a large percent of those customers before the heavy lifting in terms of the work actually occurs to replace the pole or replace replace the infrastructure. >> How much of a game changer has that been from a year ago? For example? >> It's a huge game changer, right? You think about what what this world looks like before some of these technologies that you roll occur out there into the field they have to spend time patrolling to identify where this particular outage is at and what caused it. And then you don't have that ability to remotely reroute power to energized customers. So the Viper technology truly is a game changer as you said for those waiting to get power back. >> What's the best way to communicate whether it's texting customers trying to call in or get information? >> We have from a technology standpoint we have we have the energy app. I think that is the cleanest, most effective and efficient way to actually report your particular outage. We also have a call center You can call through but we would recommend everyone to use the app where possible in this Come in. >> Excuse me. Did this come in Two waves around six and then it rained heavy where I was a breeze Later last night. Was there an extra kick out of outages Late evening or can you describe what happened? >> What rolled through? Yeah When that when the day started yesterday we were more concerned with what was going to happen after midnight and there was a weather pattern that came across Lake Michigan that we were expecting to break up and really not materialize into much of anything. But it came across Lake Michigan and stayed intact and that's what we saw come through southeast Michigan in that five, 6:00 window. So when you think about the 300,000 that were impacted, about 270,000 customers were impacted from that weather event. And then after midnight last night and the 1 to 3:00 window, I know where I live I was woken up by the rain, the wind, the lightning that caused another 30 to 40,000 customers to lose power. But the bulk of the outages were caused from the weather event that happened yesterday afternoon. >> And if you would, can you take a swing at the assessment And what I'm what I'm getting at is last night on your conference call you talked about getting eyes on things heading into the overnight period might have made it more challenging. Can you talk about in a layperson sense that process given the breadth of what you're talking about in terms of the vast amount of outages? Do you feel you have your arms around the damage now? Are you still assessing going into overnight? Was that a challenge? How would you describe finding out what you're dealing with I guess is what I'm asking. >> Yeah. Damage assessment is a critical part of the restoration process. You have to know what your damage is before you can put the right crews on it before you can get the right material there. Last night we had over 100 individuals who worked through the night to put eyes on the damage. Obviously they couldn't see all the damage because of the vastness of where the damage is there But they were able to on the circuits that they patrolled identify what damage is there, the extent of it. But then what material needed to be ordered to get it out there into the field so that we can be more efficient during the day today? Also we were able to utilize some of the information that was generated from the damage assessment process last night to request another 100 crews from local states to come to our territory today. So that damage assessment process was really critical for us and provided a lot of value in terms of understanding the magnitude of the damage out there. >> And forgive me if this is an obvious question. Last one for me Are you still worried about energized lines and feel like things have been energized in areas where lines are down never guaranteeing? Of course I understand 100% but where are you on the concern of what still may be out there and people should be wary of? >> Yeah, similar to the damage assessment process we had hundreds of individuals work through the night to go to all the wire downs that are out there. Some of them are legitimate wire downs and we either are standing by them or we taped them off. So those are are going to be going to be safe. The challenge in an event like this is we can only respond to the wire downs that we're aware of. So that's where the safety message really plays out is we know there are others other wires that are down on the ground right now. People just haven't seen them or we're not aware of them. And again, people should be staying indoors as much as they possibly can to avoid any potential of a safety issue with a downed power line. But for what we are aware of right now, we are very comfortable with our position in terms of understanding the number and the location of those wire outside Trying to just want to confirm some of the numbers. 75% power to today. Mm hmm. Tomorrow and everybody by Friday. That is correct. And then the crews of 1300 altogether for 13. >> These are 1300 from out of state. And then how many altogether? Yeah, How many altogether We would have over over 2500. Those are just overhead linemen . We also have another 1200 tree trimming crews. We have underground so there are probably 3000 field resources that are here. That's right 1300 from local states folks who may be using medical devices and are without power. You guys prioritize them in getting their power restored yourselves from a general prioritization process. Obviously the first thing we're worried about are the hazards to the public. Individuals who might be trapped by downed power lines are downed power lines. So we're really focused first to get those understood We quickly and in sometimes in parallel we're looking at dispatch centers, police stations, pumping stations, other critical institutions, if you will businesses. But inclusive of that our individuals who do have medical needs and we have a great generator process here in our in our company that we that we utilize to where if there is an individual customer who has medical needs and they need power and maybe the damage is really extensive and it's going to be a little bit of a period of time to get the broader circuit restored. We can roll a generator out to that particular address. So we need that customer though to call into us to let us know of their situation and we can respond accordingly. Anything else you want to add that we may have missed in? >> I think for me it's just I just want to make sure everyone's aware that we recognize the damage that's out there under We understand the challenging conditions that puts our customers in and we are fully committed to safely and quickly restoring power to our customers here over the next couple of days. So we we ask for a little bit of patience from our customers But please understand we are out there and working as safely and quickly as we possibly can. Thank you. Thank you. Good. >> Thank you. Today. You say sorry about today. We have restored 120,000. >> Tomorrow we by tomorrow we will have 200 and 70,000 restored by. And then the other 30,000 by the end of the day on Friday And remind the overall and the customers 100% of the services how much we serve 2.3 million electric customers. So total impacted is a little bit north of 10% of our customer base. >> Thanks. Yep. Good. >> Awesome. >> That was a press conference from D.T. after last night's storms took out power for more than 300,000 customers. Officials say they're working around the clock to get you back on the grid. They say their number one priority is safety and that the damage is significant with trees that brought downed power lines and broken infrastructure . So far they tell us roughly 38% of those outages have been fixed and that they hope to get that number to 75% by the end of the day. Our audience Gutierrez is there at that press conference You