Michigan makes Google pay for power it does not use

A 3-0 vote, and a floor under the megawatts

Michigan's utility commission voted 3-0 on 1 October to approve Order U-22058↗, the 20-year contracts under which DTE Electric will power Google's 1-gigawatt Project Cannoli data center in Van Buren Township, near Detroit Metro Airport ¹². The floor is the money term: Google pays for at least 80% of its contracted electricity every month even if it uses less, against the 50–65% floor in DTE's standard large-load tariff ³⁴.

Leaving costs more: a termination payment covering at least 15 years of minimum monthly charges, up to $2.5 billion, plus credit and collateral requirements ³². Service starts, tentatively, December 2027, with maximum load by December 2028 and quarterly reporting while the load ramps ¹.

Google pays, DTE keeps the assets

Google also funds up to 1,600 megawatts of renewables and 480 megawatts of storage that DTE will develop, own and operate, grid hardware bought by the tenant and kept by the landlord ³. DTE contends the contracts return a $1.7 billion net benefit to other customers over 20 years ³¹, and that its two data-center deals contribute nearly $9 billion to its electric system through 2045 ⁵.

Interveners' testimony called the benefit math significantly inflated, a discrepancy Chair Dan Scripps acknowledged; Attorney General Dana Nessel's brief warned of "cost shifting risks of unprecedented scale"↗ and asked for a 90% floor ²⁶. "Google can pay its own energy bills," Scripps said, "and the contracts and conditions in the order before us ensure that it does just that" ¹.

The rate freeze rides on a project in court

DTE's April pledge to file no new electric rate request until at least 2028↗ carries two conditions: the "first data center project we're supporting" must come online as planned by the end of 2027, and DTE must "receive other regulatory approvals" ⁵. That project is not Google's. It is the 1.4-gigawatt, $7 billion OpenAI and Oracle campus in Saline Township, approved in December 2025 without a contested case, now under construction, with its contracts before the Michigan Court of Appeals on Nessel's challenge ⁷²⁸.

DTE's pending $474.3 million rate case gets its decision in February 2027, and the freeze clock starts after it ⁵.

The build outruns the cash

The build already outruns the cash: Q2 2026 capex of $1.49 billion↗, up 54.5% year over year, and above operating cash flow in seven of the last eight quarters ⁹.

The same fight, one docket over

The Environmental Law and Policy Center and the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council dissented from the other direction: the order should have required distributed resources instead of leaning on large plants, the argument now aimed at DTE's proposed $6.4 billion in new gas generation ¹². Load growth "should not depend exclusively on large power plants," the ELPC's Katie Duckworth said ¹.

Wayne County's commission has already overridden a veto of the project's $125 million tax break ⁶². If Saline slips past 2027, the freeze's condition slips with it. First comes DTE's written acceptance of the conditions, due within 30 days ¹; then Van Buren Township's planning commission votes on the final site plan on 14 October ⁶.