"Two areas [in Warner Creek] are served from a different electrical circuits. This is likely due to the subdivision either being built in phases, or because of the configuration of the electrical system at the time, it made the most send to feed a portion of the subdivision from one circuit, while bringing power in to the other side from the closest circuit that bumped up to that portion.
The red portion of the subdivision experienced multiple day outages during the ice/wind/heavy snow storms on February 22nd and March 3rd due to damage to equipment caused by trees falling into the wires that provide power to that portion of the subdivision. Over 800,000 DTE customers were impacted by outages during those days and the primary cause was downed wires caused by trees breaking and falling into the equipment. While the issue didn’t occur exclusively within the subdivision, the power lines that feed the subdivision were compromised.
The west portion did not experience an outage during that weather because it is served from a different circuit. On March 25th, it likely experienced an outage when the other portion of the subdivision did not. This was caused by tree interference of equipment during high winds/storm by trees outside of DTE’s right of way. An additional outage was experienced on April 4th due to a downed power line, again not impacting the other portion of the subdivision.
In looking at the last 12 months, while outages have not occurred at the same time, the experience is similar. Both the blue and red sections have both experienced 3 sustained outages in the last 12 months. These are outages lasting longer than 5 minutes. All of the outages in the red sections have occurred during days when DTE has been in a declared storm and due to tree interference of equipment.
To improve reliability, the circuit serving the blue section – CROWN9832 – received full circuit maintenance tree trimming in 2022. This was likely a contributor to have not experienced any outage during the February 22nd and March 3rd Ice/Wind/Snow storms.
The circuit serving the red section – YORK0303 – received equipment upgrades at 6 location and spot tree trimming at 34 locations in May 2021. Additionally, the circuit is tentatively scheduled to have full maintenance tree trimming completed in 2024.
Hopefully this information is helpful and can explain the differences in the outage days."
