Your power outage report is important to us. While we do have equipment installed on our lines that indicates general areas that are without power, we rely on customer outage reports to help pinpoint specific areas without power. Your report helps us determine the full extent of an outage so we can more efficiently restore power.

When you report an outage online or by phone, your report is fed to our outage management computer system.  We use the data from this computer system to help us diagnose the full extent of the outage area, analyze weather conditions, crew availability, extent of damage and other factors to prioritize your outage report. Your report is then routed to our dispatch center, where it is assigned to a line crew for repair.

Restoration estimates are available online or by phone after you have reported your outage and we have analyzed your outage situation. Estimates may be revised if the problem is more severe than anticipated or we encounter additional problems. 

During severe storms, it may take several hours for us to analyze the extent of electric system damage and develop restoration schedules. Again, estimates may be revised if damage is more severe than anticipated or continuing severe weather delays our restoration efforts.

If you've elected to receive restoration estimate updates by automated phone call, e-mail or text message, we will contact you with an updated estimate if your initial estimate changes by more than two hours or if an initial estimate was not immediately available. 

Major storms

In a major storm, our top priority is restoring power to hospitals, nursing care facilities, police and fire stations, communication facilities (radio and television stations), and sanitary pumping facilities. We then focus on restoring power to the remaining households and businesses, starting with electrical circuits where the largest numbers of customers are without power.

Our staff constantly monitors weather conditions. When severe weather threatens, we begin mobilizing early on. By the time severe storms reach our area, our emergency team is already at work implementing our storm response plan. As soon as weather conditions permit us to safely begin restoration work, such as when the storm subsides, our crews assess the extent of damage and begin restoration. If necessary, we call in line crews from other utilities to help with restoration efforts.

Our standard restoration process follows this sequence:

1. High voltage transmission lines serving thousands of customers. These lines deliver power from the power plants to the substations. In the Detroit Edison service area, these lines are maintained by the International Transmission Co. (ITC)
2. Detroit Edison Substation equipment, which adjusts the electrical voltage so it can be routed to the main distribution lines.
3. Main distribution lines, which deliver power to large sub-divisions and large businesses.
4. Local distribution lines deliver power to smaller neighbor hoods and local businesses, either overhead (4A) or underground (4B)
5. Service lines which deliver power to individual customer locations either overhead (5A) or underground (5B).