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DTE: Nearly 62K still without power, expect 95% to have electricity restored by Sunday night

By Jack Nissen
Published  August 15, 2021 10:16am EDT
Consumer
FOX 2 Detroit

DTE apologizes for another outage while some customers remain in the dark

As these crews continue restoration efforts, DTE said some of its customers have experienced multiple outages as parts of Metro Detroit have dealt with powerful storms since June.

DETROIT - DTE is still aiming to have 95% of its customers' power restored by the end of the weekend after storms ravaged the state's electrical grid and leaving nearly a million Michigan residents without power. 

As of Sunday evening, 61,892 people that receive power from the Detroit utility still did not have power.  

While down from more than 600,000 people seeing power loss, DTE's outage map reports hundreds of neighborhoods and intersections. The outages are spread throughout Southeast Michigan.

"We understand how hard it is to be without power, especially with the repetition of strong storms that occurred from July 1 to August 11," read a statement from the company. "We have deployed 3,000 workers throughout our communities to restore power to customers as swiftly as possible. Our DTE lineworkers have been joined by more than 1,200 workers from other states as far as New York, Louisiana and Florida, as well as Canada."

Consumers Energy, the state's largest electricity provider, is still mitigating its own outage problem, with the bulk of its disruptions reported near the state's southern border, south of I-94 and around I-69.

In a release sent late Sunday, Consumers Energy reported that over 98% of its customers have had their services restored. 

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Both companies attributed the massive power disruption to 60 and 70-mph winds Wednesday afternoon, as well as several hours of intense thunder and lightning from Thursday morning that continued to batter the region.

"We recognize how hard it is to be without power, and we apologize for the outage," Trevor Lauer, DTE's president told FOX 2 on Friday. "We need to do better and we're working on it at DTE."