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May 16, 2019

“Anything is Possible” is a mindset that steers you towards a life of success. It is very fitting that Chairman and CEO of DTE Energy, Gerry Anderson, had found himself making a guest appearance on Jack Krasula’s radio show, titled “Anything is Possible.”

During the interview, Gerry answers questions about the influences in his life that made him the business man he is today. He recalls memories from his childhood, his college years, and his past opportunities of employment that lead him to his current position at DTE Energy.

You can learn all about Gerry Anderson and listen to the interview on Jack's website, http://anythingispossible.biz/showarchieves.html.

Feb 1, 2019

The big story in Michigan this week is the weather – heavy snow and frigid temperatures. Schools have been closed, meetings rescheduled and our governor declared a state of emergency to deal with the polar vortex.

Despite these harsh conditions, DTE’s 277 wind turbines performed at nearly full capacity all week long.

Listen to Dennis Buda, manager of wind fleet maintenance for our Renewable Energy team, talk about how the turbines performed during the blast of arctic cold and the steps DTE took to ensure the safety of its renewable energy operations and maintenance team. 

Sep 6, 2018

The DTE Energy Foundation is proud to support Detroit’s Jazz Festival, as well as hundreds of festivals statewide. Our support not only brings communities together, but also helps to generate more than $50 million in economic activity for the state. An added bonus? We also sponsor recycling efforts at some of Michigan’s largest festivals, including the Jazz Festival – diverting more than 100,000 tons of garbage from landfills each year. Learn more about our efforts for the environment and communities at DTEFoundation.com.

May 25, 2017

Driving down Woodward Avenue through downtown Detroit, the signs of major projects, completed or underway, are obvious. Construction of the QLINE is finished, and the streetcars are ferrying visitors and commuters from downtown to New Center. A few cranes are wrapping up work on the outside of the new Little Caesars Arena, while crews work feverishly to finish the interior. Immediately north of the arena you’ll find brand new apartments, and several sites where construction to meet downtown’s housing demand is underway.

For many long-time Detroit residents, it can seem like all of the attention for downtown and Midtown comes at the expense of the neighborhoods, which is why projects like The Map from TheHUB Detroit are so important. The Map is a year-long effort to document different levels of investment in each of Detroit’s seven City Council Districts, starting in District 5 and highlighting the $593.7 million invested in neighborhood-specific projects.

To talk about The Map, how they collected their data, and their plans to use The Map as a way to tell a deeper story about the people investing in the city, I was joined by the founder and publisher of TheHUB Jackie Berg and the Neighborhood Economic Development Director for TheHUB Robert Dewaelsche.

Apr 20, 2017

[00:00] [background music]
RoNeisha Mullen: [00:00] Welcome to today's "Empowering Michigan" podcast. I am RoNeisha Mullen.
[00:18] Today we are here with Mike Lebeis, air quality meteorologist at DTE Energy. Mike has been with DTE for 39 years. In his role he helps to monitor weather and environmental conditions at our generation sources, like our wind parks and power plants.
[00:25] To get started, Mike, what are some of the reasons that DTE Energy has an air quality meteorologist on staff?
Mike Lebeis: [00:33] The main area that we deal with is the transition, as we transition from coal fire power plants to natural gas and renewable. A lot of that involves still trying to keep reliable power supplies with the coal plants as they run for their last couple years.
[00:48] With the laws that have come down from EPA being very restrictive, there's a very difficult situation trying to bridge that gap between coal fire generation and future natural gas and renewable generation.
[01:05] RoNeisha: Tell us a little bit about how air quality can affect our energy system.
[01:12] Mike: Air quality can affect our energy system. I think back to a situation we had near River Rouge Power Plant from about 20, 25 years ago when we had one of our customer's aluminum reprocessing plant that didn't properly handle their control devices.
[01:28] They were putting a conductive mist on our transmission towers coming out of River Rouge Power Plant, which in effect disrupted their power supply because it provided a conductive pathway for the electricity to go to the towers.
[01:45] We had to prove to them that they were not doing what they should do, from a control device perspective, and built a stack to do the stack test. We had mustard color droplets of conductive metals landing on us while we were doing the stack test.
[02:04] That was one of the things that we've done where, in effect, the customer made it difficult for us to provide them electricity.
[02:17] RoNeisha: What are some of the tools and techniques that you use to monitor the weather, and the air quality, and to do your job, in general?
[02:25] Mike: DTE has a weather site that takes advantage of all the data that's out there and all the different projections from different sources, whether it be the storm forecasting center. Also, there's the local National Weather office.
[02:40] Also, there's models that they look at, too. That the forecasters for the National Weather Service look at that we look at. We're looking at slightly different things than they're looking at, to a great extent.
[02:51] The key things that we tend to look for is are the winds going to be high, about a mile up in the atmosphere. If they are, the big concern is will there be a mechanism to bring those high winds down to the surface and cause damage to trees, which subsequently affects our lines and other things.
[03:07] There's other types of weather that cause problems, too. For example, we have had some ice storms in the past where you need, normally, at least about a quarter inch of ice in order to start to bring lines down, and trees, and things like that.
[03:20] We look at probability forecasts that look for different levels of icing, because the two thresholds are a tenth of an inch and a quarter of an inch that you generally look at. If you see a quarter of an inch, a probability of 50 percent, you know you need to get ready for some damage into your system.
[03:35] RoNeisha: When people think of meteorologists, they think of forecasters, the ones we see on TV that predict the weather for us each day. How does your job differ from that?
[03:49] Mike: My job is quite a bit different than that. More than anything I deal with as we put in new sources to try to transition to more natural gas generation.
[03:59] Because the standards are so stringent right now, it's becoming more and more difficult to cite even facilities that help to expedite that. Like at some of our new compressor stations, or at compressor stations that we have a certain number of engines, we're adding engines to push more natural gas through the pipelines.
[04:17] It turns out that in a lot of cases the office buildings, and even small boilers associated with the office buildings, are allegedly causing problems at the property lines of those locations. That we have to build stacks taller than we historically have in the past, because the air quality standards have dropped dramatically from what they used to be 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
[04:41] RoNeisha: Air quality meteorologists isn't one of the professions we always hear about at career day. How do you end up in a field like this?
[04:50] Mike: Probably more than anything, when I started out at University of Michigan I really enjoyed inorganic chemistry, and was one of the few meteorologist that did. Everybody else tried to avoid the course or tried to squeak by with a C, but that's something that I really enjoyed dramatically.
[05:06] In fact, later on, when I was in my senior year and in grad school, I ended up working for Dr. Dingle that had a project with NASA, out of Virginia, dealing with space shuttle simulations. What it was, was trying to simulate the space shuttle ground cloud being sucked up into sucked up into a thunderstorm cell.
[05:29] It turned out that when we were doing test launches of the space shuttle they had, because of the type of propellant that they used in the space shuttle rockets, it had a lot of hydrogen chloride in it. What happened was it got sucked up into a thunderstorm cell and destroyed an orange grove close to the space center.
[05:49] In effect, we were trying to simulate that phenomena. I was involved in some of the subroutines that fed into the people getting PhDs to simulate that phenomenon.
[06:00] RoNeisha: Any advice to anyone who may be looking to enter this field?
[06:05] Mike: The big thing is keep your options open. It's not just weather forecasting that's out there. There are other applications that are really important, whether they deal with air quality, whether they deal with severe storm forecasting related to business operations, and things like that.
[06:22] There are a variety of openings out there. You have to, again, make contacts, talk to people. When you get an opportunity, jump on it, and hopefully your name will get called.
[06:34] [background music]
[06:34] RoNeisha: Thank you, Mike. We appreciate you coming in today to tell us a little bit about what an air quality meteorologist does and how the weather can have a big impact on our energy system. Thank you.
[06:46] Mike: You're welcome.

Feb 21, 2017

Radon is an odorless, tasteless, naturally occurring radioactive gas. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 20,000 lung cancer deaths each year in the United States can be attributed back to radon gas exposure. In fact, the United States Surgeon General recommends all homes be tested for radon gas.

This begs the question, how do you protect yourself and your family from radon gas?

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