As someone who grew up in AA, I usually have a lot of patience for power outages and feel grateful for generous neighbors and running water. However, 2023 has been tough! We’ve been without power for four days now and DTE retracted any estimate for restoration. I’m pregnant (a few days away from our due date) and have a chronic illness that flares up in the heat, so physically speaking the last few days have been miserable. Time will tell whether our frozen breast milk, postpartum food supply, and other essentials will make it or spoil. Thankfully a family member with a generator volunteered to keep our pet who is on palliative care and our old car (which we’re in the process of trying to replace) has held up for all the running around for gas, reprieve from the heat, search for food and internet. However, I don’t dare tally up the financial losses yet. I work remotely and this happened to be the last week of paid work before my unpaid maternity leave. I am still grateful for everything we DO have, but also feel extremely angry and hopeless.

Anonymous

July 29, 2023

In the July power outage we lost all the pumped breast milk for our newborn baby girl. This was especially bad because there is still a formula shortage.

What compounds the frustration is that the exact same thing happened in 2020 when we lost all the pumped breast milk for our son.If we were to calculate my wife’s pumping labor in terms of dollars, we’ve lost easily over $2000 in milk.

$2000+ in breast milk just gone because we are forced to live under a monopoly

Mark Rivett

August 26, 2023

My place of work has been out of power for 2 days now. Those are days I could’ve been paid for. Those days count, and thats money i could use to pay my bills. But instead I’m literally waiting on DTE so I can start work again.

Anonymous

July 29, 2023

Many of us have experienced and outlined the two significant power outages this summer. Besides the inconvenience of the outage you have the food loss from refrigerator and freezer plus the cost of eating in restaurants. In addition for our family approximately 5-6 years ago DTE had a transformer malfunction which caused damage to many of our electrical appliances. Cost was $8,000. 

What I have not seen discussed is the financials of DTE. Year end June 2023 they posted a $6.4 billion profit. The CEO was paid over $10 million in salary and bonuses. At least 5 C suite employees were paid over $2.5 million for the year. Does anyone think this kind of profit and pay is absurd? We consumers have little choice for electricity and this monopoly utility company should be accountable to their customers and our public leaders. The question I raise is who from the government regulates DTE?

Dan Iott

August 30, 2023

We relocated from Chicago to Ann Arbor less than 8 months ago. Since then we have had to power outages lasting longer than 2 days and now as I write this another that has just begun. The response time to these outages is appalling considering that after looking at the rate increases over the past decade and the profits DTE has amassed one would think that they would invest in outage protocol. I work in construction and have to deal with DTE directly so I have quickly found that delivering on promises and obligations is not important to them. The first outage was brutal with temperatures dropping in our home to 39 degrees and the second leaving hundreds in groceries spoiled.TV campaigns featuring a robot like spokesman strolling the streets of Ann Arbor touting DTE’s commitment to delivering service and quick restoration during outages is laughable.

Kirk Tobolski

July 26, 2023

I’ve lost power a total of 11 times in the last 6 months and am less than impressed with DTE energy. The latest outage occurred two days ago and is still ongoing, following a storm. Despite reporting the 2 downed power lines across from our apartment complex, we haven’t seen a single DTE energy truck in our area. In 95+ degree heat with no way to cool off, this is completely unacceptable.

Anonymous

July 28, 2023

In the last 6 months, we have been without power for a total of 10 days. During all of this time I’ve been pregnant… from first trimester severe morning sickness in the cold and dark in February, to my third trimester in sweltering heat in July with no A/C to now in August being only a couple weeks away from due date and not being able to pick up propane tanks to run our generator. I’ve had to call out of my healthcare job 3 times to keep my generator going for the health and safety of my pets and my own mental health. As a family who is new to the state of Michigan and only here for a medical residency, part of our decision to make a home elsewhere, when residency is over, may be affected by the atrocious service that DTE provides compared to the other 5 states my husband and I have lived in. Hoping that there can be better power solutions for such a great city and disappointed that there currently isn’t adequate infrastructure to make this happen.

Anonymous

August 26, 2023

We were recently without power for a full 48 hours, and our entirely full fridge of food spoiled. We had to throw away hundreds of dollars worth of recently purchased groceries, straight into the trash can. We are not extremely wealthy people, and are having a hard time coming up with the budget to replace these groceries anytime soon. We will likely have to buy very few and live off of very little for at least a few weeks.

Anonymous

July 29, 2023