Nessel Asks Regulators to Rehear DTE Deal

LANSING, Mich. — Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel on Friday asked the state Public Service Commission to take a second look at its approval of DTE Electric contracts to power a planned Google data center in Van Buren Township, arguing the deal leaves other utility customers exposed to costs.

Her petition for rehearing, filed in commission case U-22058, contends DTE did not carry its legal burden and that the commission applied the wrong standards of review when it signed off on the agreements.

The commission granted conditional approval on Oct. 1. The package includes a 20-year primary supply agreement and a clean capacity accelerator agreement for a 1-gigawatt facility in the Wayne County township. Regulators pointed to protections they described as among the strongest in the country, including an 80% minimum billing demand and an early exit payment covering no less than 15 years of minimum monthly bills.

Under the clean energy side of the deal, Google is to pay for DTE to build up to 1,600 megawatts of renewable generation and 480 megawatts of battery storage. DTE expects the data center to start taking power in December 2027 and reach full load by December 2028, and the utility projects a $1.7 billion benefit for other customers over the life of the contracts.

The attorney general disputes how that benefit is measured. Her office objects to an aggregation approach that weighs costs and benefits across the whole 20-year term rather than year by year, which she says could let other customers subsidize the facility for stretches of time. According to her filing, the commission itself acknowledged that would happen for at least four years, from 2035 through 2038.

Nessel also urged the commission to throw out a cap on collateral that limits the liability of Google and parent company Alphabet, and said significant transmission costs were left out of the analysis, the same complaint her office raised over DTE contracts for the Oracle and OpenAI data center in Saline.

Among her proposals are annual reconciliation of costs and benefits, stronger tracking of both, and backstops paid by Google and DTE rather than by existing ratepayers. The commission has said its authority covers only the terms of utility service, not whether or where a data center is built.

Filed under: Ann Arbor MI Business News