OAKLAND COUNTY, Mich. – Oakland County commissioners are asking residents to submit copies of their DTE Energy bills as they prepare to challenge a proposed 10% rate increase.
The board wants residents to upload two bills through a county website: one from before DTE’s most recent rate hike took effect in March and one from after.
Commissioners said energy experts will analyze the bills to determine whether customers are paying more than they should.
“It’s definitely went up between 20, 40 bucks and I live in an apartment so it’s a lot,” Walker said, referring to the increase she has seen on her monthly bill since the company’s nearly 5% rate hike took effect in March.
Commissioners are concerned the real impact of that increase could be higher than advertised.
“When you factor in all the other surcharges increases the effective rate is a lot more than that,” said Dave Woodward, chairman of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners.
After learning that DTE had filed another rate case that could raise bills by about 10% next year, the board voted to formally intervene.
Woodward said Commissioners have hired legal counsel and energy experts and are now turning to residents to strengthen their case.
“We’re asking residents to help us make our case, submitting a bill before that rate increase went in and a bill afterwards so that our experts can do an analysis to show what’s really an effective increase of the last one,” Woodward said. “Hopefully to persuade the Public Service Commission to not grant a 10% increase next year.”
Woodward said the county has already received hundreds of bills but wants more submissions to ensure the analysis reflects a broad cross-section of customers.
Local asked Woodward, if the analysis from the experts comes back that residents aren’t being charged more than the nearly five percent rate increase that went into effect in March, will they back off on DTE’s most recent request?
“Absolutely not,” Woodward said. “Regardless, a 10 percent rate increase is too high. Working families in Oakland County cannot afford it.”
Local 4 reached out to DTE for comment. They replied:
“We know that any increase in bills matters for our customers, and we’re committed to delivering clear value in return — through improved reliability, cleaner energy, helping our most vulnerable customers, and continued efforts to keep bills as low as possible.
Our customers’ bills remain below regional and national averages, and the grid is getting more resilient — with outage times improving 90% from 2023 to 2025. We’ve made real progress, but we know there’s more work to do in building a stronger grid for our customers.”
Woodward also said there is no set time for when they want all bills to be submitted. However, he is hoping to get more in the next week or two.
He mentioned the data they find will be explained to residents.
Copyright 2026 by WDIV ClickOnDetroit – All rights reserved.