DTE is looking for the second largest electrical rate increase for decades with a total of $ 574 million

DTE Energy, Michigan’s largest electricity use, would like to increase electrical prices by 574.1 million US dollars – the second largest question in more than two decades.

If it is fully granted, which is unlikely, the interest rate increase would increase the residential invoices by 11%, with the typical customer paid by $ 13.50 more every month from the beginning of 2026.

The Power Company, based in Detroit, started the process on Thursday, April 24, with an application for more than 1,800 pages in state supervisory authorities and immediately attracted fire from consumer and environmental guards.

“We already pay the highest energy costs in the middle west for the worst reliability, period,” said Bob Allison, deputy director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, in a statement. “Our bills are too high, and this last request – only months since the last increase – is a blow for Michiganders who are struggling to make their bills.”

This year, the fourth in a row is that DTE wants to increase electrical tariffs for its 2.3 million customers. The largest supply companies in Michigan are demanding this almost as quickly as possible, whereby state law prevents them from demanding more than once every 12 months.

Read more: Big Michigan Utilities just won the rate increase. You will be back soon to ask more.

It has passed 395 days since DTE’s last request, and the supervisory authorities gave him an increase of 217 million US dollars in January.

In the past two decades, the size of the latest request is only in the shade by the question in 2023, which amounts to $ 622 million.

The large, profit-oriented supply company quickly emphasized that submitting the tariff migration request only marked the beginning of a 10-month process, and customers will only see higher bills in February 2026.

The tariff proposal supports “ongoing work to improve electrical reliability and the failure safety of the system in view of extreme weather and to generate clean energy – at the same time the customer invoices as low as possible and below the national average,” said DTE spokesman Ryan Lowry in a statement.

After DTE had fought in Michigan with other supply companies in Michigan with some of the worst reliability track records, he advertised an improvement of the time of almost 70% in the period that customers spent in 2024 without electricity.

In the past five years, it attributes a grid investment of more than 5 billion US dollars to a reason, but also recognized that less extreme weather played a role in the past year.

According to Lowry, a “majority” of their increase in installments focus on the recommendations of a Deep-Tiere examination supervisory authorities, which was commissioned in default problems in the event of DTE and consumer energy.

The investigation showed that DTE was worse compared to the most important American supply companies when it was about the time that was restored to restore the electrical service after failures. It took 10 or more years between the visual review of the pole top devices.

Read more: Consumers, DTE push some insights into the great examination of their failure problems

Proponents criticize the pension company for transferring interest payers to capital investments, e.g. B. the exchange of devices and adding intelligent devices into the network, and regular maintenance prove that they reduce the failures. This is because the DTE shareholders achieve a return for these capital expenses, they say.

“The connection between reliability and affordability is that, as the audit of last year has shown, things continue to overlook the things that could do to improve reliability, for which not many expenses are required by customers, e.g.

DTE counters that it has “exceeded” its expenses for the tree commands in recent years, which aims at the top cause of failures, and it must require a multi -level approach to hardening the network.

“DTE Energy is making progress in building up the electrical network of the future – if we invest, it works,” said Lowry.

According to the energy supply company, the rate increase also supports its ability to continue to move away from burning coal.

It includes the financing to convert the Belle River coal -fired power plant to burn natural gas. While a fossil fuels that contribute to planetary inflow is still less effective than coal.

DTE will also use money from the higher tariffs to continue to become the largest battery system in the state in the Detroit River to keep the state’s largest battery system in order to store renewable energies and to release if necessary.

The Thursday of the Power Company, which is submitted to the beginning of a so -called “Tariff All”, is a legal process that is supervised by a judge who culminates in Michigan in a decision by the supervisory authorities with the three -person commission for public services.

External groups, which range from large industrial electricity users to community groups, formally enter into the process and try to question and stab holes in aspects of DTE’s request. Based on this certificate as evidence, the regulatory authorities routinely increases by half.

Nevertheless, the process is a more tedious for the guard dogs to which the office of the Attorney General Dana Nessel belongs to Michigan, one of the few organizations that include thousands of testimony pages in the case and propose an overall reduction in the increase in installments.

“It is a resource sequence of time and energy, you really have to prepare for these cases,” said the deputy lawyer Michael Moody, who heads the work of the office customer for customer applications.

It is another reason why Nessel’s office for supply companies is critical of looking for annual hikes that states that they burden customers and supporters alike. “It’s a difficult process,” said Moody.