Michigan attorney general to intervene in Consumers Energy's $436 million rate hike plan
The Attorney General Dana Nessel filed a notice of intervention on behalf of Michigan's residents in the electric rate case that the three-member public service commission will consider.
Consumers Energy is seeking an annual rate hike of about $436 million, which Nessel said is on top of $24 million more in deferred distribution costs through a surcharge that it is seeking to bill customers.
The increase, the Jackson-based power company said in its filing with the state, would cover investments to support "delivery of safe, reliable and resilient, clean and equitable, and competitive energy" to its customers.
The utility added in a statement to the Free Press that its request proposes "major investments in line clearing and technology across all communities we serve to support our long-term goal that no customer will go more than 24 hours without power."
"We understand many of our customers struggle to pay bills, and we are dedicated to the people who count on us for energy," it said. "We will continue to provide assistance and programs that help people reduce their energy use, pay bills and stay safe in their homes."
Nessel has promised to "thoroughly scrutinize" the rate increase, adding that it was part of what she called "a troubling continuation of the patterns" by the state's two largest regulated electric companies.
Recent rate hike requests from Consumers Energy and DTE, the attorney general said, have included what Nessel described as "inappropriate costs," which, in DTE's case, she identified as "private jet travel for executive staff" among other things.
"At some point, we have to ask how long utility companies like DTE and Consumers Energy will be allowed to treat customer bills and our energy rates like a blank check," Nessel said last month, when Detroit-based DTE said it was seeking to raise rates by $574 million.
That is more than double what the company was granted just months ago.
What's more, the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan — a nonpartisan, nonprofit group — has found, based on its review of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, that Michiganders already pay some of the highest energy bills in the Midwest.
In addition to high bills, the group also looked at energy reliability, which it said scored low.
More: Another DTE rate increase could 'bankrupt' Michigan families, state rep. says
Residents, advocacy groups and a state lawmaker, rallied last Thursday outside a Michigan Public Service Commission meeting at Cadillac Place in Detroit to protest DTE' Energy's request for a rate hike.
"We must continue to invest to deliver the cleaner and more reliable energy our customers demand and deserve," DTE said in an email to Free Press last week, and that it "is making progress on building the electric grid of the future."
State Rep. Donavan McKinney, D-Detroit, who is also running for Congress, addressed the crowd at the rally, saying the proposed hike is devastating for his constituents, many of whom already struggle to pay their bills.
The Michigan League of Conservation Voters, a nonprofit group which was at last week's rally, is urging the public service commission to knock down the rate hikes.
"Our bills are too damn high," said Alex Kellogg, with the league. "At a time when costs for everything are high, Consumers Energy and DTE are trying to raise our energy bills by a combined amount of more than $1 billion dollars."
Nessel, a Democrat, has been vocal in questioning rate hikes.
"Before Consumers Energy," she said, "or anyone else for that matter, can even begin to measure any affordability or reliability improvements from their last rate hike, the company is back in business asking to bill their customers an additional $400 million annually."
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan attorney general to look at Consumers Energy rate increase
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Business Insider
2 hours ago
- Business Insider
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Los Angeles Times
3 hours ago
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Zachary Levi, the star of 'Shazam!' and 'Chuck,' is raising $40 million to develop his Wyldwood Studios in Bastrop east of Austin. Plans call for two 20,000-square-foot soundstages, along with a hotel, restaurants and homes. 'I really felt this ... calling on my life to go and build what is essentially a new version in the lineage of United Artists,' he said. 'That allows the artist to really take the power back, take their destiny back.' But for all the activity, there was no getting around the math. If Texas did not pour resources into a substantial rebate program, it would continue to lose out. The challenge was to convince the conservative Legislature that an incentive program was not simply a Hollywood handout. Thus began a campaign in spring 2023 with Texas voices advocating for a strong film industry. That May, 'Good for Texas,' the video precursor to 'True to Texas,' showcased Lone Star-born actors such as McConaughey, Quaid, Owen Wilson, Powell and others in support of increased incentives. Filmmaker Chase Musslewhite, a sixth-generation Houstonian who was one of the video's producers, said she was motivated to get involved when she lost funding for her first feature after her financier opted to shoot in Louisiana. She joined forces with Grant Wood, a Midland native, who had studied film and ran a Dallas start-up, to launch the Media for Texas advocacy group. 'We wanted to help get the film community aligned and put forth one bill with one idea to make it as easy as possible for the Legislature to push for it,' Musslewhite said. The Texas Film Commission painted a rosy picture, saying that for every dollar invested in the incentives, Texas received $4 of new money into the economy. A pivotal moment arrived in late summer 2024. 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Business Insider
4 hours ago
- Business Insider
I've been on Amazon for 5 months and haven't sold anything. After talking to experts, I'm planning to make 2 changes.
February 18 was a noteworthy Tuesday for me and my business partner. We were officially up and running on Amazon. In a Google doc I update regularly with notes and reflections on our e-commerce experiment, page 32 emphatically marks the occasion: "The paddles have arrived at Amazon, and the listing is live!!" It was exciting, deserving of two exclamation points. We'd spent nearly two years brainstorming product ideas — we settled on pickleball paddles — and bringing the product to life. Many steps happened between the ideation phase and our first inventory order, which ran us a little more than $11,000 for 500 paddles. Half of them were sent to Amazon warehouses. The other 250, divided between five large boxes, are stacked to the ceiling of my studio apartment. If the product development process felt long, tedious, and exhausting, like getting over the finish line of a marathon, moving product is an Ironman. We've sold paddles through our Shopify site and at in-person events, but Amazon? It's been the Sahara Desert. Nearly five months after proudly listing our paddle, we've sold exactly four units. Take a look at our sales dashboard. Amazon Seller Central likes to remind us on a daily basis how little money we have coming in. It even provides overall business insights. The most recent one read: "Your store shows a declining trend in both sales and traffic since launch, despite maintaining excellent feature offer percentages." We get it. We haven't figured out Amazon yet. We're new, overwhelmed, and treating this very much as a side project. That said, we're paying Amazon to store and list our product — and paying rent for our paddles to sit untouched isn't exactly the growth strategy we had in mind. Shaking things up by purchasing ads and exploring TikTok Shop If I've learned anything from talking to and writing about successful entrepreneurs, it's to surround yourself with people who are smarter than you or have already achieved what you want to achieve. Ask them questions, be curious, and learn from their mistakes. Luckily, as a reporter, that's part of my job description. Based on conversations with people who know a lot more than me about e-commerce, here are two strategic shifts we can implement that could help get our product moving on Amazon. 1. Buy ads Tyler Walter is the cofounder of 330 Trading Co., a product-sourcing company. He works closely with US-based e-commerce businesses, advising them on everything from initial product development to creating diverse supply chains. Walter told me, point blank, we have to spend money on ads. "Ads are going to give you the best fighting chance of selling through all of your inventory profitably," he said. "If you're doing it right, a dollar into advertising should come back as $2 to $3 of revenue." Ideally, before we start throwing money at ads, we want more product reviews. In the Amazon world, reviews are rocket fuel — without them, our product will go nowhere. With ads, "you're paying to get eyeballs on your listing," Walter explained. "And if you have zero reviews, every time someone looks at your listing, the chances of them purchasing are much less than if there were a bunch of reviews." So far, we have three Amazon reviews. Walter said a good short-term goal for us is to get to double-digits. Then, we can look at our competitors and adjust our review goal accordingly. "Take the first five pickleball paddles that pop up when you search 'pickleball paddle.' How many reviews do they have? Can you get to a 10th of that?" he said. He encouraged us to think like a consumer: If we're comparing products and see one with 500 reviews, one with 200, and one with two, we're likely not going to buy the one with two. "But if you see 20, it makes you think, 'This might be trustworthy. They have a better price. Let me give them a shot.'" He told us that we may run into a bit of a chicken-and-egg dilemma: We want reviews before spending on ads, but might need ads to actually get reviews. As far as how much money we need to spend on ads, he explained that Amazon ads are more affordable compared to Google, Meta, and TikTok ads since Amazon already has so much traffic, "so you can test it out with a very small budget." That said, we want to spend enough to make an impact, and, generally speaking, spending more will lead to better results. It'll take some trial-and-error, and if we have the budget to hire a professional on a site like Fiverr or Upwork to manage our ad campaigns, we should. As with most things in life, there are no guarantees. "There's a possibility that you put $700 in over the course of a week, and you don't get a single sale. That is a possibility," he said. "But very quickly, you'll start to see data of how many people are seeing your ads, how many people are clicking in your ads, how many purchases you're getting, what the conversions are — and if you're working with a good professional, they can take that data and and tweak things and you should be able to get a pretty good idea of: Hey, if I put $500 into ads this month, I'm going to get an extra $1,500 in sales that I other otherwise wouldn't have got." 2. Think beyond Amazon and explore TikTok Shop I learned from Eugene Khayman, who built his own seven-figure Amazon business and now leads a community of 700 top e-commerce entrepreneurs called Million Dollar Sellers, that we should be thinking beyond Amazon. It's harder than ever to build a profitable Amazon business. Compared to when he started selling on the platform in the early 2010s, the fees are higher, the competition is stiffer, and the strategies are constantly evolving. Not to mention, tariffs, which added an entirely new level of complexity for Amazon sellers at the start of 2025. "If people are treating Amazon as their whole business, they're definitely more at risk," he said, and "there are so many different verticals of e-commerce to serve." He pointed to TikTok Shop, where he sees "a lot of opportunity," and compared it to Amazon in the early years before it became overrun with sellers. A smart strategy would be to couple Amazon with TikTok or other marketplaces. He also emphasized that "complacency kills," a hard truth that even the most established sellers in his community need to be reminded of. "E-commerce was really so easy the past few years, and we have to be more critical of ourselves and overall." The best way to avoid complacency and stay ahead of the curve is to keep talking to people who know what they're doing. "It's all about putting yourself in a room with people that are smarter than you, so that you're growing faster and you're not making silly mistakes," he said. I started an e-commerce business with $5,000 up front after writing about financially independent Amazon sellers. Here's how I doubled my budget. My friend and I pooled $10,000 to start an e-commerce company. After months of brainstorming products, we chose pickleball paddles. Months into launching a pickleball eCommerce company with $10,000, I'm already over budget. Here are all of my startup costs, including a surprise $2,095 expense.
