End the Blackout Tax: Demand Real Relief, Higher Outage Credits, a Modern Grid from DTE
The Issue
What’s happening right now
On July 3, 2026 — the eve of Independence Day — a summer thunderstorm with wind gusts up to 60 mph knocked out power for more than 490,000 Michigan customers, including over 293,000 served by DTE alone, with 176,000+ in Wayne County. Not a hurricane. Not an ice storm. A thunderstorm with strong winds — the kind of weather a properly maintained grid should be able to handle. West Detroit, Allen Park, Garden City, Wayne, and Westland were hit hardest. Families heading into the Fourth of July weekend lost refrigerators full of food, had no air conditioning, and had no idea when power would return.
This is not an anomaly. It is a pattern — and it has been for years. Michigan customers pay combined energy bills that often reach $400 to $600 or more per month — for a service that fails them during every major storm. Michigan customers pay over 21 cents per kilowatt-hour — among the highest rates in the Midwest and well above the national average. A typical DTE household pays roughly $178 per month for electricity alone, and high-usage homes — especially those with electric heat or older housing stock — see bills far higher.
Despite MPSC oversight and billions in DTE investments, customers are still suffering unacceptable downtime in 2026 — when our world runs on technology, EVs, data centers, and electrification. Enough is enough.
The numbers don’t lie
Michigan ranks dead last in the nation for power restoration times. According to 2023 federal data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Michigan has the longest average outage duration per interruption of any state — over 700 minutes when major storm events are included. Dead last. Despite paying some of the highest rates in the Midwest.
DTE claims 2025 was their best reliability year in two decades. It took 20 years of dead-last performance, relentless customer pressure, advocacy from CUB Michigan and the Attorney General, and milder-than-usual weather to produce one decent year. Even with those gains, DTE’s target baseline is still 133.9 minutes per interruption — above the national average of 119 minutes. And then on July 3, 2026, a single summer thunderstorm put 293,000 customers back in the dark. One better year does not erase two decades of failure.
Residential electricity rates have soared 114% over the past 20 years — while industrial rates went up just 11% over the same period. The average Michigan homeowner pays roughly $850 more per year than they did in 2006. DTE will say Michigan bills are “below the national average” — but a Detroit News analysis found the rate of increase outpaces 46 other states.
Since 2020, the MPSC has approved more than $1 billion in annual revenue increases for DTE. A $242 million rate hike was approved in February 2026. Five days later — five days — DTE announced another rate case for $474 million, which would raise the average residential bill by another $11.06 per month. As Attorney General Nessel said: “How many times are Michigan families expected to reach deeper into their pockets?”
Meanwhile, DTE is fast-tracking billion-dollar infrastructure for corporate data centers — including a 1.4-gigawatt deal in Saline Township with contracts so secretive that the Attorney General had to file a motion to reopen the case. New infrastructure for data centers gets special treatment and special rates. But the poles, lines, and aging grid serving your home and your neighborhood? That never seems to get the same urgency.
DTE reported $1.53 billion in operating earnings in 2025 — more than $100 million higher than the prior year. That works out to roughly $4.2 million per day in profit. Your outage credit after sitting in the dark? $42. That is a ratio of 100,000 to 1.
DTE’s CEO received $8.46 million in compensation in 2025 — a 59% raise from the prior year. The former CEO and now Executive Chairman made $12.69 million. Combined, just those two executives pulled over $21 million. The CEO got a 59% raise the same year customers saw another rate hike and 211,000 disconnections.
DTE cut power to 211,647 customers for nonpayment in 2024 — up from 202,976 in 2023. While paying $607 million to shareholders. Families with thousands in accumulated debt are trapped in cycles of disconnection and reconnection. A ProPublica investigation found DTE’s rate of shutoffs outpaced every other Michigan utility during the pandemic.
A federal judge ordered DTE to pay $100 million for Clean Air Act violations at its Zug Island facility — issued two days after the MPSC approved DTE’s $242 million rate hike. The court found DTE saved $70 million by failing to comply with environmental regulations. Emissions caused asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, and increased risk of cancer. When confronted at trial about being one of Michigan’s worst sulfur dioxide polluters, a DTE attorney said: “So what?” Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced the Make DTE Pay Act in response.
Trees and vegetation cause roughly half of all customer outage time. Yet in its last rate case, DTE requested a longer tree-trimming cycle — meaning less maintenance, not more. The MPSC denied it. DTE prefers expensive capital projects over cheaper reliability measures like tree trimming because the company earns a guaranteed 9.9% return on equity on capital spending. More spending = more profit, regardless of outcomes.
Previous rate cases have included costs like private jet travel for executive staff. DTE even paid for a legislator to play golf at a PGA tournament — the same legislator who, as chair of the House Energy Policy Committee, blocked legislation to lift the cap on distributed generation.
DTE actively killed community solar. The company opposed two community solar bills in 2023 that contained a 30% carve-out for low-income customers. An MSU report estimated that legislation would have created 18,500 jobs and brought in $1.4 billion in investment. DTE fought it because community solar threatens their monopoly.
This is the Blackout Tax. You pay more every year. You get worse service than almost every other state. Your CEO gets a 59% raise. 211,000 families get disconnected. And when the power goes out, you get $42 and a shrug.
Follow the money
Of Michigan’s 148 state senators and representatives, 138 — almost all of them — have received campaign contributions from DTE’s PAC, its executives, lobbyists, or some combination. This is not a partisan issue. DTE gave both the Michigan Senate Democratic Fund and the House Republican Campaign Committee $40,000 each. Both parties. Equal money.
Governor Whitmer leads all state elected officials with $235,900 in donations tied to DTE. Michigan lawmakers accepted $421,100 in utility campaign donations in 2025 alone. During the 2022 election cycle, that number was $1,607,340.
Beyond direct donations, DTE funds dark money nonprofits that pour millions into lawmaker-aligned accounts. A DTE-linked nonprofit, Michigan Energy First, spent close to $4.9 million in 2022. DTE contributed $8 million to that single nonprofit between September 2024 and August 2025.
As CUB Michigan’s executive director has noted: DTE claims political contributions come from shareholders, not customer revenue — but “the revenue all comes from ratepayers.”
What we demand
We call on DTE Energy, the MPSC, and state legislators to take these actions:
1. Meaningful outage compensation — Replace the $42 base bill credit with significantly higher automatic credits or direct cash payments. Implement automatic, hourly credits that scale with outage length, frequency, and impact. No family should lose hundreds in food, wages, and comfort and receive a token adjustment on a future bill.
2. Performance standards with real consequences — Tie DTE’s rates and profits directly to measurable reliability targets. The current $10 million in performance incentives represents 0.65% of DTE’s annual earnings — a rounding error. Implement penalties large enough to actually matter.
3. Independent audit and full transparency — Order an independent third-party audit of DTE’s vegetation management, maintenance, and grid hardening. Require public release of circuit-level outage data. Require DTE to disclose which ZIP codes are most affected by disconnections — data the company currently withholds.
4. Accelerate modern grid solutions — Fast-track smart grid automation, predictive maintenance, rooftop and community solar, battery storage systems, microgrids, and targeted undergrounding. These technologies exist, they work, and they are deployed across the country.
5. The right to energy independence — Michigan caps alternative electric suppliers at just 10% of load, protecting the monopoly. Expand customer choice. Homeowners should have the unobstructed right to generate, store, and use their own solar and battery power. Stop blocking community solar. Bipartisan legislation already exists — SB 588 would abolish the 10% cap entirely. Ask your legislators to support it.
6. Stronger MPSC enforcement — Refuse to approve rate increases exceeding inflation unless the utility demonstrates sustained reliability improvements. Scrutinize every dollar — no more private jets, no more PGA golf trips.
7. Get DTE money out of Michigan politics — Support the Mop Up Michigan ballot initiative to ban political contributions from regulated monopoly utilities. 148 lawmakers and candidates have already signed the No Utility Money Challenge — the rest should follow.
What you can do right now
Sign this petition — then take one more step:
• File your own MPSC complaint at michigan.gov/mpsc/consumer/complaints — every individual complaint creates an official record that regulators cannot ignore.
• Contact your state legislators at legislature.mi.gov — ask if they take DTE money and demand they support SB 588 and utility accountability.
• Share this petition everywhere — Facebook groups, Reddit (r/Michigan, r/Detroit), X, Nextdoor, and with every neighbor who has sat in the dark.
• Support Mop Up Michigan at mopupmichigan.org — sign the petition to ban utility political donations on the November 2026 ballot.
• Connect with CUB Michigan at cubofmichigan.org — they fight every rate case on behalf of residential customers.
Together we can force real relief and build the modern, reliable electric system Michigan deserves. We are not a blank check for utility shareholders. We are 2.3 million customers. We remember. And we vote.
#EndTheBlackoutTax
Every fact in this petition is sourced from public records: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Citizens Utility Board of Michigan, MPSC proceedings, Michigan Attorney General press releases, DTE Energy SEC filings, ProPublica/Outlier Media, Center for Biological Diversity, Detroit News, Planet Detroit, Energy and Policy Institute, Michigan League of Conservation Voters, and U.S. Department of Justice.
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The Issue
What’s happening right now
On July 3, 2026 — the eve of Independence Day — a summer thunderstorm with wind gusts up to 60 mph knocked out power for more than 490,000 Michigan customers, including over 293,000 served by DTE alone, with 176,000+ in Wayne County. Not a hurricane. Not an ice storm. A thunderstorm with strong winds — the kind of weather a properly maintained grid should be able to handle. West Detroit, Allen Park, Garden City, Wayne, and Westland were hit hardest. Families heading into the Fourth of July weekend lost refrigerators full of food, had no air conditioning, and had no idea when power would return.
This is not an anomaly. It is a pattern — and it has been for years. Michigan customers pay combined energy bills that often reach $400 to $600 or more per month — for a service that fails them during every major storm. Michigan customers pay over 21 cents per kilowatt-hour — among the highest rates in the Midwest and well above the national average. A typical DTE household pays roughly $178 per month for electricity alone, and high-usage homes — especially those with electric heat or older housing stock — see bills far higher.
Despite MPSC oversight and billions in DTE investments, customers are still suffering unacceptable downtime in 2026 — when our world runs on technology, EVs, data centers, and electrification. Enough is enough.
The numbers don’t lie
Michigan ranks dead last in the nation for power restoration times. According to 2023 federal data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Michigan has the longest average outage duration per interruption of any state — over 700 minutes when major storm events are included. Dead last. Despite paying some of the highest rates in the Midwest.
DTE claims 2025 was their best reliability year in two decades. It took 20 years of dead-last performance, relentless customer pressure, advocacy from CUB Michigan and the Attorney General, and milder-than-usual weather to produce one decent year. Even with those gains, DTE’s target baseline is still 133.9 minutes per interruption — above the national average of 119 minutes. And then on July 3, 2026, a single summer thunderstorm put 293,000 customers back in the dark. One better year does not erase two decades of failure.
Residential electricity rates have soared 114% over the past 20 years — while industrial rates went up just 11% over the same period. The average Michigan homeowner pays roughly $850 more per year than they did in 2006. DTE will say Michigan bills are “below the national average” — but a Detroit News analysis found the rate of increase outpaces 46 other states.
Since 2020, the MPSC has approved more than $1 billion in annual revenue increases for DTE. A $242 million rate hike was approved in February 2026. Five days later — five days — DTE announced another rate case for $474 million, which would raise the average residential bill by another $11.06 per month. As Attorney General Nessel said: “How many times are Michigan families expected to reach deeper into their pockets?”
Meanwhile, DTE is fast-tracking billion-dollar infrastructure for corporate data centers — including a 1.4-gigawatt deal in Saline Township with contracts so secretive that the Attorney General had to file a motion to reopen the case. New infrastructure for data centers gets special treatment and special rates. But the poles, lines, and aging grid serving your home and your neighborhood? That never seems to get the same urgency.
DTE reported $1.53 billion in operating earnings in 2025 — more than $100 million higher than the prior year. That works out to roughly $4.2 million per day in profit. Your outage credit after sitting in the dark? $42. That is a ratio of 100,000 to 1.
DTE’s CEO received $8.46 million in compensation in 2025 — a 59% raise from the prior year. The former CEO and now Executive Chairman made $12.69 million. Combined, just those two executives pulled over $21 million. The CEO got a 59% raise the same year customers saw another rate hike and 211,000 disconnections.
DTE cut power to 211,647 customers for nonpayment in 2024 — up from 202,976 in 2023. While paying $607 million to shareholders. Families with thousands in accumulated debt are trapped in cycles of disconnection and reconnection. A ProPublica investigation found DTE’s rate of shutoffs outpaced every other Michigan utility during the pandemic.
A federal judge ordered DTE to pay $100 million for Clean Air Act violations at its Zug Island facility — issued two days after the MPSC approved DTE’s $242 million rate hike. The court found DTE saved $70 million by failing to comply with environmental regulations. Emissions caused asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, and increased risk of cancer. When confronted at trial about being one of Michigan’s worst sulfur dioxide polluters, a DTE attorney said: “So what?” Rep. Rashida Tlaib introduced the Make DTE Pay Act in response.
Trees and vegetation cause roughly half of all customer outage time. Yet in its last rate case, DTE requested a longer tree-trimming cycle — meaning less maintenance, not more. The MPSC denied it. DTE prefers expensive capital projects over cheaper reliability measures like tree trimming because the company earns a guaranteed 9.9% return on equity on capital spending. More spending = more profit, regardless of outcomes.
Previous rate cases have included costs like private jet travel for executive staff. DTE even paid for a legislator to play golf at a PGA tournament — the same legislator who, as chair of the House Energy Policy Committee, blocked legislation to lift the cap on distributed generation.
DTE actively killed community solar. The company opposed two community solar bills in 2023 that contained a 30% carve-out for low-income customers. An MSU report estimated that legislation would have created 18,500 jobs and brought in $1.4 billion in investment. DTE fought it because community solar threatens their monopoly.
This is the Blackout Tax. You pay more every year. You get worse service than almost every other state. Your CEO gets a 59% raise. 211,000 families get disconnected. And when the power goes out, you get $42 and a shrug.
Follow the money
Of Michigan’s 148 state senators and representatives, 138 — almost all of them — have received campaign contributions from DTE’s PAC, its executives, lobbyists, or some combination. This is not a partisan issue. DTE gave both the Michigan Senate Democratic Fund and the House Republican Campaign Committee $40,000 each. Both parties. Equal money.
Governor Whitmer leads all state elected officials with $235,900 in donations tied to DTE. Michigan lawmakers accepted $421,100 in utility campaign donations in 2025 alone. During the 2022 election cycle, that number was $1,607,340.
Beyond direct donations, DTE funds dark money nonprofits that pour millions into lawmaker-aligned accounts. A DTE-linked nonprofit, Michigan Energy First, spent close to $4.9 million in 2022. DTE contributed $8 million to that single nonprofit between September 2024 and August 2025.
As CUB Michigan’s executive director has noted: DTE claims political contributions come from shareholders, not customer revenue — but “the revenue all comes from ratepayers.”
What we demand
We call on DTE Energy, the MPSC, and state legislators to take these actions:
1. Meaningful outage compensation — Replace the $42 base bill credit with significantly higher automatic credits or direct cash payments. Implement automatic, hourly credits that scale with outage length, frequency, and impact. No family should lose hundreds in food, wages, and comfort and receive a token adjustment on a future bill.
2. Performance standards with real consequences — Tie DTE’s rates and profits directly to measurable reliability targets. The current $10 million in performance incentives represents 0.65% of DTE’s annual earnings — a rounding error. Implement penalties large enough to actually matter.
3. Independent audit and full transparency — Order an independent third-party audit of DTE’s vegetation management, maintenance, and grid hardening. Require public release of circuit-level outage data. Require DTE to disclose which ZIP codes are most affected by disconnections — data the company currently withholds.
4. Accelerate modern grid solutions — Fast-track smart grid automation, predictive maintenance, rooftop and community solar, battery storage systems, microgrids, and targeted undergrounding. These technologies exist, they work, and they are deployed across the country.
5. The right to energy independence — Michigan caps alternative electric suppliers at just 10% of load, protecting the monopoly. Expand customer choice. Homeowners should have the unobstructed right to generate, store, and use their own solar and battery power. Stop blocking community solar. Bipartisan legislation already exists — SB 588 would abolish the 10% cap entirely. Ask your legislators to support it.
6. Stronger MPSC enforcement — Refuse to approve rate increases exceeding inflation unless the utility demonstrates sustained reliability improvements. Scrutinize every dollar — no more private jets, no more PGA golf trips.
7. Get DTE money out of Michigan politics — Support the Mop Up Michigan ballot initiative to ban political contributions from regulated monopoly utilities. 148 lawmakers and candidates have already signed the No Utility Money Challenge — the rest should follow.
What you can do right now
Sign this petition — then take one more step:
• File your own MPSC complaint at michigan.gov/mpsc/consumer/complaints — every individual complaint creates an official record that regulators cannot ignore.
• Contact your state legislators at legislature.mi.gov — ask if they take DTE money and demand they support SB 588 and utility accountability.
• Share this petition everywhere — Facebook groups, Reddit (r/Michigan, r/Detroit), X, Nextdoor, and with every neighbor who has sat in the dark.
• Support Mop Up Michigan at mopupmichigan.org — sign the petition to ban utility political donations on the November 2026 ballot.
• Connect with CUB Michigan at cubofmichigan.org — they fight every rate case on behalf of residential customers.
Together we can force real relief and build the modern, reliable electric system Michigan deserves. We are not a blank check for utility shareholders. We are 2.3 million customers. We remember. And we vote.
#EndTheBlackoutTax
Every fact in this petition is sourced from public records: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Citizens Utility Board of Michigan, MPSC proceedings, Michigan Attorney General press releases, DTE Energy SEC filings, ProPublica/Outlier Media, Center for Biological Diversity, Detroit News, Planet Detroit, Energy and Policy Institute, Michigan League of Conservation Voters, and U.S. Department of Justice.
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Petition created on July 3, 2026