DTE Energy updates a map of power outages in its service area every half hour on the 15 and 45. Look at this map for power outage details for Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and the rest of the DTE service area.
http://www.dteenergy.com/map/outage.html
When there is a severe storm, the outage center gives a total number of customers without power and the number of customers who have been restored.
http://www.dteenergy.com/residentialCustomers/problemsSafety/outageCenter/index.html
This map from the Midwest ISO shows loading of the grid across the Midwest, to help get a sense for whether power problems are or could be transmission related or grid-wide.
https://www.midwestiso.org/MARKETSOPERATIONS/REALTIMEMARKETDATA/Pages/LMPContourMap.aspx
In the news
- March 15, 2012. Tornado hits Dexter with widespread damage to about 100 homes but no injuries and no deaths.
- June 18, 2010. Severe thunderstorm warnings, "bow echo" on radar a sign of a derecho. 120000 lose power in DTE. Lightning causes multiple house fires. One dead from tree falling on car, firefighters injured fighting fire. AnnArbor.com story
- June 5, 2010. Tornado warnings, widespread flooding. Tornado hits Dundee with widespread damage, 11 injuries, no deaths. Damage to Fermi 2 nuclear power plant puts the facility on Alert status.
- April 3, 2010. Power outages and fluctuations across the area due to high winds. AnnArbor.com story.
- Feb 20 2010. Power fluctuations and brownouts across Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti; 600 homes without power due to an unspecified equipment malfunction. Outage map on a2docs.
- Dec 15 2009. Brownouts on Ann Arbor's west side affect 2000+ customers, near the site of the Dec 9 outage.
- Dec 9 2009. Transformer fire takes out 6000+ customers on Ann Arbor's west side. Detailed outage map with Google Maps; power expected to take more than 1 day to restore.
- Dec 9 2009. High winds bring down power lines across M-14 near Main St.
- April 25 2009: Storms go north of Washtenaw County, hit Livingston, Oakland, St Clair; 140000 customers out system wide. Power outage is worst in Oakland County includes links from the daily Oakland Press.
- May 28 2008: Auger hits power line on Broadway Street construction site, 3000 out for up to 2.5 hours. Ann Arbor News coverage quotes DTE spokesman Len Singer.
- Aug 23 2007: at 815 pm 100-1000 out in each of several zips in Livingston Co, 100-1000 out in Dexter
- Aug 1 2007; 1,000 still out in Pittsfield Township. http://blog.mlive.com/annarbornews/2007/08/some_pittsfield_residents_stil.html "Northwest Ann Arbor residents reported partial outages known as "brown-outs" from Tuesday night into this morning. Spokesman Scott Simons said DTE does not track partial outages."
- Aug 1 2007: 4,700 out in Pittsfield Township, tree trimming accident; http://blog.mlive.com/annarbornews/2007/08/tree_trimmer_knocks_out_power.html
Interruptable air
If you have interruptable air conditioning service, there used to be status page for predicting if your air will be interrupted. (Note that this page is currently unreachable, after DTE scrambled their web site.)