Whitmer’s MPSC approves $217M rate jump for DTE — now at $585M in hikes in just over a year

From The Mid­west­ern­er:

The Michi­gan Pub­lic Ser­vice Com­mis­sion ignored rec­om­men­da­tions from Michi­gan Attor­ney Gen­er­al Dana Nes­sel on Thurs­day to unan­i­mous­ly approve a $217.4 mil­lion rate hike for DTE.

The move brings the state’s total DTE spend­ing approved by the three-mem­ber, gov­er­nor-appoint­ed MPSC to rough­ly $585 mil­lion in just over a year, with Thursday’s rate hike fol­low­ing a $368 mil­lion increase in Decem­ber 2023.

Typ­i­cal res­i­den­tial DTE cus­tomers using 500 kilo­watt hours of elec­tric­i­ty will pay about $4.61 more per month start­ing Feb. 6 as a result of this week’s hike, though DTE con­tends the increase will be off­set by a reduc­tion in the “pow­er sup­ply cost recov­ery fac­tor,” The Detroit News reports.

Read their full sto­ry here.

The MPSC is appoint­ed by the gov­er­nor, but their mem­bers almost always con­sist entire­ly of for­mer exec­u­tives and oth­er per­sons affil­i­at­ed with the two state ener­gy monop­o­lies, DTE and Con­sumers Ener­gy.

Because the monop­o­lies have a leg­isla­tive­ly-guar­an­teed prof­it mar­gin, they actu­al­ly make more mon­ey when their costs are high­er and ener­gy is more expen­sive — hence their sup­port for the Democ­rats’ attacks on afford­able ener­gy in favor of unaf­ford­able wind and solar ener­gy.

The util­i­ty monop­o­lies earn more, they use their prof­its to fund Lans­ing politi­cians’ cam­paigns and attack reform­ers, and the green ener­gy rack­et cycle con­tin­ues.

The only losers are Michi­gan’s rate-pay­ers: indi­vid­ual cit­i­zens, who pay not only their own ener­gy bills but also bear the cost of indus­tri­al and com­mer­cial ener­gy in the price of every­thing we buy.