Starting June 1, DTE and Consumers Energy will have a summer rate increase depending on the time of day.
For DTE customers, higher rates are in effect between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, June through September.
For Consumers, it’s 2 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, June through September. Add it to the list of things customers are not pleased with.
Since DTE’s performance during Metro Detroit’s February storms, there has been a move by a consortium of environmental justice and civil rights groups to have the public lobby their state representatives to force the utilities to do better.
“The problem is they haven’t been performing how they should be, and we have the highest rates in the Midwest, and we have the worst reliability rates in the Midwest as well,” said Nick Dodge from the League of Conservation Voters.
Dodge was on hand Wednesday (May 31) night at a town hall in Pontiac, asking people for their feedback about their experiences have been with the utilities.
It may have been 90 degrees Wednesday, but nobody’s forgotten our winter power outages.
“I was out of power six days,” said Sheila Kirkendolph. “A friend let me use their generator, which cost more than $200 in gas.”
The various advocacy groups told the group it was time to start attending things like their state representative’s coffee hours and demand Lansing do something.
In addition to the summer rate increase, DTE was asking the Michigan Public Service Commission to allow an overall rate increase of $619 million.
