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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. AG […]

In December, CUB released its latest edition of the annual Utility Performance Report. We already did a blog post summarizing some of the major findings in that report, but now we’d like to touch upon another area of the report that seems relevant given Gov. Whitmer’s recent State of the State address: the environmental impacts created by Michigan’s

The electric grid is changing quickly, moving away from a centralized system of thermal power plants to a more distributed and renewable grid. One of CUB’s priorities is to make sure utility customers get a fair share of the benefits of this process or change, while also not having to cover an undue amount of

Good news for Michigan utility customers! In a November post we explained the eyebrow-raising proposal from DTE to sell customers on a program where they could prepay a fixed amount for their electricity service, but be suddenly disconnected from service if the prepaid amount ran out. At its last meeting of 2022, on Dec. 21, the Michigan

This year utility customers in Detroit protested shabby treatment by DTE. Lawmakers said the problem of unaccountable utility companies is big enough that consumers need more protection and introduced bills to create new laws that would penalize utilities and compensate customers for long power outages. Is the service from Michigan’s utilities really that bad? Are these reactions exaggerations? For

DTE wants to sign up customers for a new (voluntary) program in which they would prepay for electricity, and then face near immediate shutoff if the money they put in runs out. Fortunately, an administrative law judge has agreed with testimony filed by CUB and the Michigan Department of Attorney General and recommended that the Michigan Public

On Sept. 8, the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC), in an order, gave a stark assessment of the state of Michigan’s grid that likely rings true with the tens of thousands of ratepayers that have lost power over the last few weeks: “Put bluntly, Michigan’s distribution reliability is inadequate, and current plans for improvements are insufficient.” The

The Michigan Public Service Commission’s (MPSC) Aug. 22 hearing in Detroit was a rare opportunity for DTE residents to express their frustration with paying high rates for electric service that is only getting more and more unreliable in the face of worsening severe weather. DTE customers did not let that opportunity go to waste, as

It is often talked about how renewable energy, chiefly wind and solar, has increasingly become one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation, meaning there is not a tradeoff between clean energy and affordable energy. That is overall true, which is why CUB tends to push Michigan utilities toward a greater use of renewables. But

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.