Consumers Energy’s offices at One Energy Plaza, Jackson. Source. Licensed Under Creative Commons License CC BY-SA 4.0. On March 1, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) approved Consumers Energy’s latest electric rate case with an order that cut the rate increase by about 45% compared to what the utility had proposed. During the MPSC’s meeting Commissioner Alessandra Carreon explained one reason why the utility did not get all the spending approved for cost recovery that it wanted: “the company does not always demonstrate how each dollar spent toward restoration actually translates to ..read more

Photo by Brendan Wood, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Regulations that punish utilities for poor performance is perhaps what Michiganders need the most to get more accountability and better electric reliability. But utilities are steering the regulatory process to craft new regulations toward weak and self-serving rules. Now that process is getting the spotlight it deserves with a recent Detroit News article that reports on how the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan, a number of community and environmental groups, municipalities around the state and more are regist ..read more

The new Utility Performance Report for 2023 is the latest edition of CUB’s annual series reporting federal data on how Michigan electric and gas utilities stack up to utilities around the country on performance on key reliability, affordability and environmental metrics (Blog posts here and here provide some interesting detail about last year’s report).   ..read more

Source: JK Nair. A promising sign recently came in DTE’s pending electric rate case when an administrative law judge released a strongly-worded proposal for decision (essentially a recommendation for the Michigan Public Service Commission [MPSC]) finding that nearly half of the rate hike that DTE is asking for should be rejected. The judge agreed with arguments from CUB and other intervening groups that DTE’s plans for spending on the grid have essentially disregarded cost-effectiveness as a goal ..read more

Photo by Brendan Wood, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0   The Citizens Utility Board (CUB) of Michigan is working to ensure that penalties on utilities for poor electric reliability are paid to Michigan residents who are most harmed by power outages and that utilities do not get rewarded for substandard performance as part of a proposed new regulatory construct ..read more

Credit: Matthew Paul Argall. Licensed through Creative Commons. CUB has been arguing for years that a key part of the solution to Michigan’s problem of poor electric reliability and high energy costs for customers has to be performance-based regulation: rules that hold utilities accountable by financially penalizing them if they fail to perform well on metrics like the number of outages. Now, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) is taking some of its most concrete steps yet to create performance-based regulation in Michigan ..read more

New expert witness testimony filed in DTE’s latest electric rate case exposes how the utility’s proposed rate hike, one of its biggest ever, does not deliver value to customers and fails to take the steps needed to turn around DTE’s abysmal record on reliability ..read more

Source: JK Nair Summer is here, and so is the season of mass power outages. Widespread, prolonged blackouts have struck American Electric Power customers in our neighbor to the south, and outages affecting thousands of customers recently occurred in Michigan. Of course, when you are dealing with thousands of miles of power lines, some outages are inevitable, especially in stormy weather ..read more

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is urging state regulators to open up lobbying activities by utilities to more oversight and transparency by instituting a slate of much-needed reforms that would help groups like CUB counteract the influence that utilities have had on the political and ratemaking process — often to the detriment of ratepayers ..read more

“DTE and Consumers Energy, which together provide power to a majority of Michigan residents, appear to be aiming for just marginal improvements in grid reliability. Much more is needed for Michigan residents to be safe and secure in their homes with stable access to electricity, a basic necessity,” CUB Executive Director Amy Bandyk wrote in a Detroit News op-ed at the end of last year. Unfortunately, on March 17, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) failed to rise to the level of what is needed to alleviate the poor service Michiganders have been receiving from their utilities at hig ..read more