City of Grosse Pointe Officials Meet with DTE

A recent but long ago schedule meeting between DTE Energy and officials was productive and helpful, City Manager Pete Dame said. 

The meeting held July 21 was at the request of DTE but allowed city officials to express some of their concerns too, Dame said. The timing is coincidental but convenient following the , including the City. 

Two DTE vice presidents briefed city officials on current work crews are completing on Charlevoix from University Road to Fisher Road with the goal of increasing reliability of the that area, Dame said, explaining the benefits will reach Mack Avenue.

DTE also offered to meet regularly with the City going forward. 

The requests shared by the City for DTE are: 

• to begin work on an already partially completed project to replace 80-year-old residential street lights
• a list of reports details DTE outages with length, scope and cause
• a list of power grid improvements and maintenance completed within the last year as well as a list of what's planned in the year ahead
• an assessment of power grid serving the Village, in particular the one serving businesses near Cadieux

Major sections of the street light replacement program were completed two years ago and earlier, Dame said, but no progress has been made since. Two large portions of Caideux Road were replaced and a portion of Fisher Road, he said. 

As for the Village reliability issue, Dame said sporadic outages have impacted the operation of the parking garage and the area near Cadieux Road has had a high number of outages in the last five years. An outage Dame described as most notable happened a few years ago on election day at .

The outages have taken their toll on the parking garage equipment and even forced some of the businesses to close for a day.

All of the information the City has requested will help officials to understand the state of the power service to residents and businesses, Dame said, as well as have an idea of how DTE is planning to work to improve weaker, less reliable areas.

The City's meeting is one of many in the Grosse Pointes but also the metro area involving DTE. Power outages have plagued many customers all summer--some going for as much as eight days without power. 

 recently and promised to finish upgrade work that was to have been completed four years ago by November. 

Meanwhile, Grosse Pointe Park council members are considering taking their complaints beyond DTE, described as giving "a dog and pony show" by one council member.

residents have had the lengthiest outages this summer--some going as long as eight days without electricity--while customers in and the City of Grosse Pointe have had the highest number of outages. Though most have been for short time periods, some customers on the M-streets were without power for three days recently.