DTE Plans To Restore Most Power Outages In Metro Detroit By Sunday

METRO DETROIT — Crews were working Friday morning to restore power to hundreds and thousands of DTE customers in metro Detroit after Wednesday's icy winter storm.

As of Friday morning, 461,000 DTE customers in metro Detroit were still without power. Another 171,000 Consumers Energy customers across Michigan were also in dark Friday morning.

DTE President Trevor Lauer said in a Friday morning news conference that Friday will be their first full day of restoration with the aim of getting power back to 95 percent of customers by Sunday.

He also said there will be over 3,000 crews with roughly 200,000 people working around the clock to restore power.

"We're going to do everything possible to get to that 95 percent number by Sunday," Lauer said. "That's still our goal."

On the other hand, Lauer said people are reporting downed wires when it's actually power outages, which is slowing down crews.

Despite this, DTE said it restored power to roughly 160,000 customers on Thursday.

A Wednesday ice storm knocked-down over 3,000 power lines and caused hundreds of thousands of people to lose power across Michigan.

Matt Paul, the executive vice president of distribution operations at DTE, said some areas in southeast Michigan saw three-quarters of an inch of ice, a level they haven't seen in nearly 50 years.