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Podcast 83 Special Episode on DTE Electric's Work October 14, 2025
Host: Stephan Currie
Guests: Brian Calka of DTE Electric and Samantha Gibson of MAC
Topic: Michigan residents frustrated by power outages can lay a good deal of blame on our leafy companions, said an executive with one of the state’s largest utilities in a new episode of Podcast 83.
“Trees cause 50 percent of the (electric) outages,” explained Brian Calka, senior vice president for distribution operations for DTE Electric.
“You think about these 60- to 70-mph winds. They are ripping trees out of the ground and throwing them into our infrastructure,” Calka said. “We have over 1,000 people out there every day trimming trees to minimize that …”
Calka and his team are responsible for an electric grid serving 2.3 million customers with 45,000 miles of wire and cable and more than 1 million electric poles – “those things that you see on the side of the road,” Calka noted.
Pushing against this system, on top of the normal aging process for equipment, is the increasing wrath of Mother Nature.
“It is at an all-time high for the frequency of (extreme weather) events that we are seeing, the magnitude of these events that we are seeing,” Calka said. “It's been growing at a much higher rate than what we've ever seen before. So, it's really incumbent on utilities like DTE to harden the grid, to make it more resilient.”
These challenges to the lines must be addressed at the same time the utility is engaged in a transformational project to create the power to send through them.
DTE has invested $5 billion in renewable energy since 2010 and plans to invest an additional $8 billion by the end of the decade, Calka noted.
“(I)n Michigan, we started doing this type of work with wind and solar 15 years ago. Or you think about the original RPS (renewable portfolio standard). This was set many, many years ago, and we built out a number of projects to support that,” Calka said. “And then in the latter part of the previous decade, it increased a little bit. But then, gosh, a couple of years ago, really, it got moving again through very noble ambitions to clean up all the generation sources.”
See video versions of all Podcast 83 episodes on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@michiganassociationofcount2606
Visit the Podcast 83 page at www.micounties.org
View all episodes
By DerekHost: Stephan Currie
Guests: Brian Calka of DTE Electric and Samantha Gibson of MAC
Topic: Michigan residents frustrated by power outages can lay a good deal of blame on our leafy companions, said an executive with one of the state’s largest utilities in a new episode of Podcast 83.
“Trees cause 50 percent of the (electric) outages,” explained Brian Calka, senior vice president for distribution operations for DTE Electric.
“You think about these 60- to 70-mph winds. They are ripping trees out of the ground and throwing them into our infrastructure,” Calka said. “We have over 1,000 people out there every day trimming trees to minimize that …”
Calka and his team are responsible for an electric grid serving 2.3 million customers with 45,000 miles of wire and cable and more than 1 million electric poles – “those things that you see on the side of the road,” Calka noted.
Pushing against this system, on top of the normal aging process for equipment, is the increasing wrath of Mother Nature.
“It is at an all-time high for the frequency of (extreme weather) events that we are seeing, the magnitude of these events that we are seeing,” Calka said. “It's been growing at a much higher rate than what we've ever seen before. So, it's really incumbent on utilities like DTE to harden the grid, to make it more resilient.”
These challenges to the lines must be addressed at the same time the utility is engaged in a transformational project to create the power to send through them.
DTE has invested $5 billion in renewable energy since 2010 and plans to invest an additional $8 billion by the end of the decade, Calka noted.
“(I)n Michigan, we started doing this type of work with wind and solar 15 years ago. Or you think about the original RPS (renewable portfolio standard). This was set many, many years ago, and we built out a number of projects to support that,” Calka said. “And then in the latter part of the previous decade, it increased a little bit. But then, gosh, a couple of years ago, really, it got moving again through very noble ambitions to clean up all the generation sources.”
See video versions of all Podcast 83 episodes on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/@michiganassociationofcount2606
Visit the Podcast 83 page at www.micounties.org