Power outages linger into Tuesday after Friday storms in Southeast Michigan

Power outages have lingered into Tuesday for thousands of Southeast Michigan residents affected by the severe storms and strong winds that rolled through the area Friday.

The number of DTE customers without power on Tuesday was shown at 11,288 as of 7 p.m. That's a significant improvement from the 168,000 shown on the outage map at 12:10 a.m. Sunday. DTE provides electricity to most of Metro Detroit and Southeast Michigan; Consumers Energy provides service to parts of Monroe and Lenawee counties.

On Tuesday, CEO Joi Harris says they plan to have all power restored to customers that night.

Hundreds of crew members from 12 states and Canada were called to Michigan over the weekend to help speed up restoration, according to DTE.  

"We estimate that 95% of impacted customers will be restored by the end of the day Monday, July 6," the company said on Monday.

DTE set up bottled water and emergency supply pickups to affected residents in Dearborn and Monroe over the weekend.

Brian Calka, senior vice president of distribution operations at DTE Energy, said that Friday's storms were one of the most impactful in regard to damage to the company's system that he's seen in his 20 years in the energy industry. Around 2,000 power lines were down after the severe weather, with a large part of the damage happening in Monroe County.

"We have many cases where we have outages with eight to 10 to 12 broken poles, and in order to restore all the customers who are impacted by that outage, every one of those poles has to be replaced," he said. "To replace a pole, it's anywhere from three to four to five hours, depending on the location of that pole."

Here is what you need to know for Tuesday:

Power outages by county 

The PowerOutage.com website listed the following outages in Southeast Michigan on a county-by-county basis as of 6:25 a.m. Tuesday.  

• Wayne County – 21,035. 
• Monroe County – 3,969.
• Oakland County – 3,637. 
• Macomb County – 2,238. 
• Washtenaw County – 1,088. 

Monroe County was the hardest hit on a percentage basis from the windstorm, according to the PowerOutage website. Monroe County still had over 5% of area residents without power Tuesday morning. 

Bill credits/reimbursement 

Once a power outage reaches a certain duration – in this case, 96 hours or four full days – Michigan law calls for automatic bill credits. The credit is automatically applied to a bill within 90 days of the event. The credit is $42 per day the outage continues. 

For those who lost power at 6 p.m. Friday, the 96-hour point begins at 6 p.m. Tuesday. 

DTE acknowledged that the credit may not cover everything customers had to pay out of pocket. 

"We know that $42 doesn't cut it," Harris said in terms of expenses such as lost food or medication, meals out and generator fuel.