WATCH: DTE provides update on power restoration efforts after last night's severe weather

good okay well then we can get started here so good morning uh everybody my name is Brian Kela I'm a vice president in the distribution operations business unit here at DTE and we are recording this here in our system operation Center this really is the heartbeat of our distribution grid where we can monitor power flows on the grid understand where there may be damage and then reroute power uh where needed so what I want to do here today is provide 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 uh that weather brought with it 70 mph plus winds uh in fact we did see a reported wind gust of 76 M an hour at Metro Airport which we haven't seen here U from a straight line wind standpoint in years that weather uh did generate around 300,000 customer outages um across our entire system so the damage was rather widespread uh we had a number of individuals working through the evening last night and we have people working this morning um thus far we've restored about 120,000 of those of those customers who were impacted so about 37 38% thus far from a restoration uh rate standpoint Point 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 C remaining customers would be restored by Friday so when you think about resourcing an event like this this is really an all hands on deck Approach at DTE uh we have individuals from our corporate staff functions Finance legal uh Communications everyone is really aligning on 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 um about 1 12200 1300 individuals who are here on property now they've come as far uh from as far away is Wisconsin uh Tennessee New York some of the other midwest states as well so this really is an all handson deck approach to remove some of the hazards uh to the public but also to restore our customers in a timely uh timely manner um we do recognize as well this weather event did cause a number of school outages uh 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 um those individuals as I sit here now the thing I want to make sure that everyone is aligned around is safety that is our number one priority as you can imagine a weather event of this magnitude does bring down power lines across our service territory so a couple rules of thumb that we we like to communicate if you can stay indoors please do so 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 down power line please do not cross uh the caution tape um itself if you see a power line when you're outside please stay at least 25 ft away from it and if the power line is in contact with a fence or some other object do not any way touch that object because it could be carrying some of that electricity um also generators so we we know when people do lose power they do have generators uh generators can be extremely deadly uh due to the fumes that they emit so please operate your generators outside please move them away from doors and from Windows uh to ensure that everybody um stays safe so myose closing remarks here would be that please understand we understand the 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 um and we have thousands of individuals here on our property helping to support that cause so uh please be um patient with us please treat the individuals out in the field with respect they're doing great job and uh it's very challenging conditions with the heat and some of the challenging work out there um so so please grant them some Grace as they're doing their work in the field uh so that will conclude my remarks thank you talk a little bit about some of the challenges you guys may have faced trying to get people back onside of the volum how many customers so yeah the challenge one of the big challenges we're we're seeing is in some storms you will have a very localized area that loses power so you can flood it with resources and 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 have had the damage is significant this is not necessarily lifting a limb off of a line and 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 uh but we are fully committed to the work at hand and and everyone's really laser focused on doing what they can to restore power um as quickly as they possibly can last week you guys highlighted the smart grid technology you guys been investing in the recloser technology how did that play a factor into last night 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 we do have instances from the weather yesterday that these reclosers helped 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 right from this control center that we're talking um 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 percentage of those customers before the 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 if from a year ago for example it's a huge game changer right uh you think about what what this world looks like before some of these Technologies it's you roll a crew 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 energize customers so the Viper technology truly is a game Cher as you said those lighting to uh get power back what's the best way to communicate whether it's text I should customers try to call in get information we have from a technology standpoint we have we have the DT Energy app I think that is the the cleanest uh 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 the app where possible did this come in excuse me did this come in two waves around and then it rain heavy where I was at least later last night was there an extra kick out of outages late in the evening or can you describe what hit and what rolled through yeah when the 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 56:00 window so when you think about the 300,000 that were impacted about 27 70,000 um customers were impacted from that weather event and then after midnight last night in the 1 2 3:00 window I know where I live I was woken up by the rain the wind the lightning uh 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 of 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 late person sense that process given the the breadth of what you're talking about in the 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 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 cruise on it before you can get the right material there last night we had over a hundred individuals who worked through the night to put eyes on the damage right obviously they couldn't see all the damage because of the vastness of where the damage is at but they were able to on the circuits that they patroled 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 uh during the day today um 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 from me are you still worried abouted lines do you feel like things have been deenergized 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 that 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 um some of them are legitimate wire Downs and we either standing by them or we tape them off so those are are going to be going to be safe um 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 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 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 the down power line but for what we are aware of right right now we are very comfortable with that position in terms of understanding the number and the location of those wire Downs thank you yep I just want to confirm some of the numbers have 75% powered up today 90% tomorrow and everybody by Friday that is correct and then the crews uh 1300 Al together or 1300 from out of state these are 1300 from out of state okay and then how many all together um yeah how many Al together we would have uh over over 2500 those are just overhead linemen we also have another 12200 tree trim Crews we have underground so there are probably 3,000 field resources that are here that's right 1300 from local States folks who may be using medical devices and are without power do you guys prioritize them in getting their power restored yeah from a general prioritization process obviously the first thing we're worried about are the hazards to the public um individuals who might be trapped by down power lines or down power lines so we're really focused first to get those um understood we quickly and sometimes in parallel we're looking at uh dispatch centers police stations pumping stations other critical um 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 companies 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 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 I I think for me it's just I just want to make sure everyone's aware that we we recognize the 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