Case Study: DTE Energy achieves millions in annual savings through fleet optimization with OSIsoft's PI System

Utility Saves Millions with Fleet Optimization

DTE Energy, a Detroit-based $8.6 billion utility serving over 3 million Michigan customers, faced a critical data and visibility problem: plant performance was measured only as aggregated dollars-per-megawatt using siloed, historical data, so operators couldn’t identify which day-to-day factors drove costs or respond quickly when market commitments (after joining MISO) risked costly penalties—over $17 million in fines in their first year.

DTE deployed OSIsoft’s PI System across its seven plants and established a centralized Performance Center to provide real-time, fleetwide visibility (doubling tracked variables and feeding actionable data to operators). The initiative enabled operators to cut heat rates, boost uptime and shift outages to low-value market periods, generating millions in annual savings (an initial $13M from process improvements and more than $30M in additional fleet optimization savings) and slashing MISO fines to under $7M.

DTE Energy

Sumanth Makunur

Lead Engineer, DTE Energy