Ann Arbor residents plan ballot initiative to dump DTE and begin shifting city toward public power [View all]

A group of Ann Arbor residents are taking the first steps toward removing DTE Energy as their electrical provider and creating a public electric utility board.

On Tuesday, Ann Arbor for Public Power announced that its members are drafting a ballot proposal for the November 2026 election, asking voters to create a new board of public electric utility, before taking over infrastructure from DTE Energy at a later date.

DTE Energy is one of the largest energy utilities in the state and has faced frequent criticism for high rates and unreliable electricity. According to the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan, an energy utility watchdog, DTE customers experienced an average of 1,542 minutes without power in 2023, ranking among the worst utilities in the nation for outages.

In its announcement, the group argued that shifting energy to a public power utility would be highly likely to provide more reliable, more renewable, and less costly power to Ann Arbor residents.


https://michiganadvance.com/briefs/ann-arbor-residents-plan-ballot-initiative-to-dump-dte-and-begin-shifting-city-toward-public-power/