Van Buren Township Google data center: Nessel asks regulators to rehear DTE’s 20-year contracts, warning customers could pay

LANSING — Attorney General Dana Nessel on Friday asked the Michigan Public Service Commission to take another look at DTE Electric’s contracts to power a Google data center in Van Buren Township. She says the deals as approved could leave DTE’s household and business customers paying part of the bill.

Nessel filed a petition for rehearing in case U-22058. The commission approved the 20-year contracts on Oct. 1 with conditions it said would keep other customers from bearing any of the project’s costs.

“These are massive, twenty-year, billion-dollar contracts between one of the wealthiest businesses on the planet, and one of the most powerful companies in the State,” Nessel said in a statement. “The MPSC simply didn’t do their job here.”

What the commission approved

The commission approved two agreements. One sets the terms of electric service to the data center. The other has Google pay for DTE to build up to 1,600 megawatts of renewable energy and 480 megawatts of battery storage to serve it, according to the commission’s Oct. 1 release.

The release listed several safeguards. The contract runs 20 years, not the five years normally required under DTE’s large-load rate. Google must pay for at least 80% of its contracted demand even if it uses less, compared with 50% to 65% under the regular rate. If Google cancels early, it must still pay at least 15 years of minimum monthly charges. The deal also has credit and collateral requirements.

Those protections “will ensure that other customers aren’t subsidizing this large addition to the state’s energy grid,” commission Chair Dan Scripps said at the time. DTE told regulators the contracts would bring a $1.7 billion benefit to its other customers over 20 years. The utility expects the data center to start taking power in December 2027 and reach full load by December 2028.

Where the attorney general says customers are exposed

Nessel’s main objection is to what her office calls an “aggregation” approach. Costs and benefits to other customers are measured across the whole 20-year term instead of year by year. Under that approach, her office says, other customers can subsidize the data center in some years as long as the 20-year total works out. It says the commission itself concedes that will happen for at least four years, 2035 through 2038.

Her office also wants the commission to reject a cap on the collateral Google and its parent, Alphabet, must post. It says DTE has not accounted for major transmission costs, the same objection it raised when the commission approved DTE’s contracts for the Oracle and OpenAI data center in Saline. Nessel wants costs and benefits reconciled every year, or the contracts rejected.

The commission’s Oct. 1 release noted that its authority covers only the terms of utility service, not whether or where a data center can be built.

Sources:
Michigan Department of Attorney General, “AG Nessel Challenges MPSC Approval of DTE’s Google Data Center Contracts,” Oct. 30, 2026 (petition for rehearing, case U-22058, quotes, aggregation, 2035–2038, collateral cap, transmission costs), https://www.michigan.gov/ag/news/press-releases/2026/10/30/ag-nessel-challenges-mpsc-approval-of-dtes-google-data-center-contracts
Michigan Public Service Commission, “MPSC approves DTE Electric energy contracts for Google data center, protects other customers from the project’s costs,” Oct. 1, 2026 (contract terms, 1,600 MW/480 MW, Scripps quote, $1.7 billion DTE claim, service dates, scope of authority), https://www.michigan.gov/mpsc/commission/news-releases/2026/10/01/mpsc-approves-dte-electric-google-data-center-and-contracts-protects-customers-from-project-cost
Photo: PeRshGo, “Van Buren Charter Township Hall, Michigan.jpg,” Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Buren_Charter_Township_Hall,_Michigan.jpg

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Tags: Van Buren Township · Google · Data Centers · DTE Electric · Michigan Public Service Commission · Dana Nessel · Electric Rates