WYANDOTTE, Mich. – When the storms moved through, Glowfish Studios in downtown Wyandotte lost power.
Owner Vanessa Morse said electricity was restored quickly.
“A lot of times you will hear in the news that other cities are struggling, and our power is on,” Morse said.
Just across the city line in Lincoln Park, resident Jeff Douds said he spent about 27 hours without power.
“No lights, what do you do now?” Douds said.
Douds said the outage was especially noticeable because his mother, who lives across the street from him in Wyandotte, never lost power.
“I could see her lights were on,” Douds said.
Douds said the difference comes down to the utilities serving each community.
“Lincoln Park is DTE. Wyandotte has its own power company here,” Douds said.
The city of Wyandotte owns and operates its own municipal electric utility.
According to the Michigan Municipal Electric Association, 40 communities across Michigan have municipal electric utilities.
Wyandotte is the only one in Metro Detroit.
The city purchases electricity through ITC and distributes it to customers through its own local system.
Wyandotte Municipal Services said about 1,000 of its 14,000 customers lost power Friday night.
By 6 a.m. Saturday, a six-person crew had restored service to all affected customers.
“We were getting quite a few calls Friday. People of Wyandotte, they’re not used to being out,” said Ryan Smith with Wyandotte Municipal Services.
Smith said Wyandotte’s electric service area covers about 5.2 square miles, making it much smaller than DTE Energy’s service territory across southeast Michigan.
“DTE is huge. You’re talking about a whole southeastern part of our state, so we are very small,” Smith said.
The American Public Power Association says municipal electric utilities typically have reliability advantages compared with investor-owned utilities and cooperatives.
Data reported to the U.S. Energy Information Administration show that customers of public power systems generally experience fewer outages and shorter outage durations.
DTE Energy was contacted for comment but did not respond before publication.