When power suddenly went down Tuesday night, immobilizing much of Detroit’s Innovation Center in Midtown, NextEnergy did what it does best: collaborate to get the problem resolved.
DTE Energy sustained equipment failure Tuesday, June 19, at 9:15 p.m. at the substation that feeds our facility. This resulted in a complete outage to many customers in the area, including NextEnergy.
DTE contacted Jim Saber, NextEnergy’s VP, Business Development and Government Relations, at 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, and was at our center by 10:15 a.m. NextEnergy immediately began steps to accelerate a building shutdown to allow DTE to connect a 1.2MW generator through our microgrid to support the electrical load at their Amsterdam substation.
Steve Romanoski, Manager, Power Programs and Testing, and his team led the NextEnergy effort to facilitate the generator connection in a safe and quick manner, working side by side with the DTE crew. NextEnergy employees shifted into portable mode: they switched to battery-power on their laptops and used cell phones to communicate.
Power to NextEnergy was restored at approximately 11:30 p.m. All systems were back on line around 12:45 a.m.
Jim Saber commented, “This is a great example of NextEnergy being responsive to our partners and leveraging our people and assets. I’m sure most of the greater TechTown area is happy that power to their facilities is more reliable as a result of these efforts.”
