DETROIT (WWJ) DTE customers will be seeing an increase in their utility bills.
According to a press release from the Michigan Public Service Commission, DTE said a typical residential customer who uses 500 kilowatt hours of electricity per month will see an increase of about 71 cents or .78% on their monthly bill.
This comes after the The Commission on Friday authorized DTE to implement a $30.57 million rate increase.
This rate increase is about one tenth less of the $388 million price hike DTE filed an application for in January to “recover increased investments in its generation and distribution systems to improve safe and reliable electrical services to its 2.3 million customers in southeast Michigan,” The Commission said.
The largest amount of the reduction in the approved rate stemmed from “disputed projections” used to calculate the utility’s sales forecast. These forecasts were based on shifting patterns of residential electricity as Michiganders moved past the early COVID lockdowns and began to leave the house more regularly, and return to the office. Early projections thought electricity use would decline as the restrictions loosened; but instead, residential electrical sales “surged” in 2020 and jumped again in 2021, even as residents returned to their pre-COVID lifestyles.
The Commission has directed DTE to “prepare and submit…a full scale, well developed, permanent” Changing Forward electric vehicle program proposal, including a cost benefit analysis. It said it will work with DTE in the first quarter of 2023 to work on “matters of grid reliability” and power distribution, including at least one technical conference before May, and adopted a five-year average to project storm restoration expenses.
The rate hikes are effective in one week (11/25).