Judge Wallace Agrees to Cut DTE's Proposal by Millions, Will the MPSC?

For the past eight months We Want Green Too has been involved in the intervention process advocating for resident ratepayers in the face of DTE Electric's $574 million proposed rate increase. At this stage in the rate case an administrative law judge reads over all of the evidence presented and makes a recommendation to the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) before the commission makes the final decision.

With Time of Use (TOU) Rates having recently gone into effect, Detroiters are still getting used to adjusting the demands of their schedules in an attempt to avoid peak-rate charges which occur between 3:00p and 7:00p Monday through Friday; which time happens to be when adults are getting off work, students are coming home from school and most people are trying to fit in evening tasks to prepare for the next day.

Adjusting one's electricity to use in order to avoid higher bills enforced by TOU rates means waiting to use the oven, do laundry, turn on the computer and their television until after 7:00p. With a few hours of cooking, doing homework or catching up on shows after a full day; that leaves eight hours of sleep for those waking up between 7-8a. Residents could decide to wake up earlier before their workday just to catch up on house tasks before heading to work or school but this is unrealistic for many. Evenso, DTE suggests saving laundry for the weekends and running appliances at night, but neither of these options are a perfect solution for everyone. Low-income households especially have much less personal flexibility, some may have fixed incomes or work on the weekends. The expection for households to shift their lives around DTE's rates without having any expection of what to budget for with another round of increases hanging over their heads is tragic, completely disreguarding the financial instability that most are facing today.

On top of TOU rate changes and proposed increases, DTE Electric has just notified ratepayers of new credit and debit card fees being enforced March 2nd. This would mean that all of DTE's ratepayers will see an increase in their electricity costs in multiple ways in the next 45 days and potentially three ways by this time next year (not to mention DTE's proposed increase on gas rates too). Card fees will be $2.99 per transaction, meaning costs for customers who split their bills into multiple transections for better budget management spread out across the month would pay more just for making that choice unless they're able to pay cash at a payment kiosk or mail a check ahead of their payment due date.

Resident ratepayers will pay more if they can't manage to adjust their schedules from using electricity outside of peak hours.

Resident ratepayers will pay even more if they can't manage to pay by mail or in cash for their bills.

Resident ratepayers will pay even more than that if they can't afford to pay their bills all in one transaction.

And many of these ratepayers are low to middle income residents.

What Can You Do?

Administrative Law Judge Sally Wallace can only make a determination based upon what's in the record, only what's already been discussed as a part of the current rate case. This means raises from prevoius cases also can't be taken into context, nor can the new unregulated card fees.

Fortunately Judge Wallace does agree with We Want Green Too that ratepayers shouldn't be forced to pay $10 million for the credit card processing system that DTE put in place (this would be in addition to the previously mentioned card processing fees going in effect in March). Along with that the Judge saw a conflict in rates covering DTE's corperate membership payments which accounts for another $1.5 million.

Most importantly the Judge has stated that the commission must consider affordability. Not only as apart of this case, but as apart of their mission as a Public Service Commision which requires commissioners to ensure that energy costs, and in this case electric costs, aren't 'compromising a household's ability to meet other basic needs'. In last year's rate case we argued that there were already many customers making difficult decisions between food, healthcase and energy costs. Even moreso, in our current economic climate rising energy costs are putting a heavy strain and thousands of households.

However, the Judge legally doesn't have the final authority in these types of cases, the MPSC has the final say. If the MPSC is committed to this as their definition of affordability established through their Energy Affordability and Accessibility Collaborative (EAAC) suggests then there would be more confidence in the public that rates wouldn't increase any further, propelling us into crisis.