Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel wants Michigan regulators to sharply scale back DTE's bid to increase electric rates, according to WILX. She said the company should be granted far less than it requested.
Her office's proposal would reduce the residential impact from a 10% hike to roughly 2% if regulators accept it, a notable difference for households already dealing with higher energy costs.
Here's what to know
In testimony submitted in the case, the attorney general asked the Michigan Public Service Commission to cut DTE's $474.3 million electric rate request to no more than $134.5 million, a reduction of 71%.
That outcome would leave residential customers facing a much smaller increase as the state's review moves forward.
WILX reported that DTE filed this case after receiving approval for a separate $242.4 million increase, and Nessel argued that the company again included expenses that should not be passed on to customers.
"Throughout my nearly 8 years in office, DTE and Consumers Energy have consistently inflated their rate hike requests with unjustified costs," Nessel said. "This latest filing is no different."
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DTE serves roughly 2.3 million electric customers across southeast Michigan. Even relatively modest percentage increases can translate into meaningful monthly costs for families, renters, and small businesses trying to stay within tight budgets.
More background
A major focus of Nessel's testimony is data center development and whether ordinary customers could end up helping to pay the cost of serving large, energy-intensive facilities.
Her office said DTE's large-load studies raise concerns that the utility is laying the groundwork to spread those expenses across existing ratepayers.
DTE was asked in discovery whether its approach to assigning costs would prevent them from being shifted. The company responded that the term "cost shifting" was unclear and ambiguous.
Nessel treated that response as a warning sign, particularly as utilities across the country face growing demand from artificial intelligence and hyperscale data centers.
If utilities build more generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure to support massive new loads, the question is who will pay for it.
Nessel also tied the issue to reliability, arguing that higher rates should deliver visible benefits to customers rather than primarily supporting shareholder returns. Her testimony states that DTE's rates and capital spending have risen significantly.
What's being done?
Nessel is asking the Michigan Public Service Commission to set clearer guardrails before data center growth drives up household utility costs.
One recommendation is to place large-load data centers in their own rate category so those customers are treated differently from homes and small businesses.
She is also calling for data centers to directly absorb any added generation, transmission, and distribution expenses they create, while still covering a share of embedded costs.
In addition, her office recommended monitoring the addition of new resources tied to large-load customers and updating modeling standards to better protect residential ratepayers.
The current rate case is not the only dispute underway. Nessel has also submitted testimony regarding Google's data center proposal and filed a brief supporting her appeal in the Michigan Court of Appeals challenging the commission's conditional approval of two DTE special contracts for a hyperscale AI data center in Washtenaw County.
Her office said she intervenes in every major utility rate case before the commission and has helped keep more than $4.6 billion in proposed increases off Michigan consumers' bills.
For Nessel, the central question is whether Michigan families will be asked to subsidize massive new energy demand.
"We cannot allow these utilities to force everyday ratepayers to foot the bill for DTE's prized billion-dollar data center developments, and unless the MPSC insists on these standards, that's what's going to happen," she said.
Where can I learn more?
Michigan isn't the only place where utility rate requests are drawing pushback. Around the country, attorneys general, regulators, and residents are challenging proposals they say would leave households paying too much — especially when big infrastructure costs are on the line.
• In North Carolina, the attorney general said Duke cut its proposal, but customers still face excessive increases.
• In Oklahoma, regulators helped slash PSO's rate hike from 15% to about 1%.
• In Delaware, officials cut Delmarva Power's increase in half as residents pushed back on bills.
• Elsewhere in Michigan, residents fought a 1.4-gigawatt power plant until Consumers Energy backed away.
These cases offer a sense of how much a rate case can change once regulators and local communities start pressing utilities on the details. The outcome in Michigan could do the same, especially as the state decides who should cover the costs of rising energy demand.
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