24,000 in the dark after storms knock out power — again

Storms knocked out power in Michigan — again.

Thundershowers, along with strong winds, knocked out power Tuesday, leaving tens of thousands of residents in the dark.

By Wednesday morning, the count was about 24,000 Michiganders — 20,000 DTE and 4,000 Consumers Energy customers — who had no power, with crews frantically working to reconnect lines.

The outages were scattered across metro Detroit, including Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Farmington Hills, the Grosse Pointes, and Detroit’s Jefferson Chalmers area.

“Restoration estimates will be available as soon as our teams can safely assess damage,” DTE posted on its website, as it blamed the outages on the weather. “Please remember to stay at least 20 feet away from all downed wires and consider them live and dangerous.”

DTE was also focused Wednesday on announcing that Detroit Thermal, a clean steam energy supplier, had enrolled in its MIGreenPower program, and how that would “ultimately offset the carbon dioxide equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions from over 1,000 passenger vehicles driven for a year.”

Michigan residents have grown weary of warnings and outages, as officials and regulators investigate power reliability, asking why it is not higher and whether the utilities are doing enough to fix it and to credit customers when it is out.

Just a week ago, utility crews worked through the night to restore power to customers whose electricity was knocked out by severe weather across Michigan. That time, about 100,000 homes and businesses were affected.

Before 9 p.m. Tuesday, the National Weather Service in White Lake warned people to seek shelter who might be at various Detroit venues. Initially, nearly 40,000 customers reportedly lost power, but close to half of them had been restored by morning.

Last month, the power companies came under intense fire from customers, the news media and the state attorney general, who called on them to credit customers who continue to deal with power outages after severe weather.

The criticism from the Michigan League of Conservation Voters was especially sharp.

“For years now, our residential rates have been skyrocketing, eating up more of family budgets, and yet all we get is more blackouts, longer outage times, and less reliability,” Bob Allison, deputy director for the league said. “DTE and Consumers seem content to rake in massive, windfall profits while families and businesses across Michigan suffer without power.”