Today, three organizations—the Michigan Chemistry Council, the Michigan Forest Products Council, and Timber Products of Michigan—sent a letter to the Chairman of the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) in favor of standby rate reform for DTE Energy, the Detroit-based utility. The organizations expressed concern that DTE has proposed to disregard CHP system forced outage rates in its proposal. Further, in July 2018, the utility applied to increase its standby rates by increasing power supply capacity charges for standby customers and by ignoring the Commission’s direction to incorporate forced outage rates in the calculation of the generation reservation fee. Finally, DTE proposes to increase its distribution charge rate with no proration for standby customers, and with no study to support its claim that standby customers impose the same costs on the distribution grid as full requirements customers. The letter emphasizes that addressing these issues will help make existing CHP systems more cost-effective for Michigan customers.
The Alliance for Industrial Efficiency also submitted public comments to the MPSC.