Extreme Temperatures

Keeping You Comfortable, Even in Extreme Temperatures

In the summer, when air conditioners go on—and stay on—the demand for electricity goes through the roof. During winter months, furnaces need extra power too. That’s why DTE Energy works hard year-round to make sure we deliver the safe, reliable power our 2.2 million electric customers expect, no matter what challenges the temperatures bring.

Extreme Weather Preparedness

Preparation, Maintenance and Improvement

We perform maintenance and inspections of our power-generating plants every spring and fall so that our equipment is in optimal condition, ensuring we are ready for extreme summer and winter temperatures.

Throughout the year, we perform inspections and maintenance on our electrical distribution system too. We trim trees along thousands of miles of our electrical lines to prevent limbs and branches from damaging our equipment—a leading cause of power outages.

We also make ongoing system improvements to our infrastructure, from upgrading poles and wires to investing in new technologies. This helps to prevent service interruptions, improve restoration times and deliver the many benefits of a smart grid to our customers.

Standby Power

When customer demand for power climbs with the extreme changes in temperature, our system sometimes needs an extra boost. For those times, we have a fleet of smaller generating units that can be brought online quickly, making sure customer needs are seamlessly met.

The Ludington Pumped Storage Plant, which we co-own with Consumers Energy, is a hydroelectric plant located on the shores of Lake Michigan, just south of Ludington. It has a generating capacity of approximately 2,018 megawatts—enough to support a community of 1.4 million people in minutes.

We also have 84 fossil generation peaking units located throughout our service territory in the eastern side of Michigan. Our most recently acquired peaker, Renaissance Power in Carson City, has a capacity of 776 megawatts—enough to power approximately 260,000 households on a hot summer day. All together, these units can reach full power of 2,497 megawatts in less than 30 minutes.

Our Greenwood Energy Center in Avoca, Mich., can deliver up to an additional 785 megawatts of natural-gas-fired electricity when demand peaks and then back down to 40 megawatts during off-peak hours.

Mobile Diesel Generators