DTE Energy wants another $574 million from Michiganders to continue its “progress on building the electric grid of the future.”

The ask, the second largest in the company’s history, was submitted in late April, a mere three months after the Michigan Public Service Commission approved a $217 million rate hike for DTE.

Last year’s rate hike increased monthly bills for the average residential customer by $4.61 per month, and DTE’s April request would add another $13.50 monthly starting next year, Planet Detroit reports.

The most recent request equates to an added $162 per year for some of the least reliable service in the country.

“We must continue to invest to deliver the cleaner and more reliable energy our customers demand and deserve,” DTE wrote to the Detroit Free Press in an email on Wednesday.

The company wrote it’s “making progress on building the electric grid of the future.”

DTE is also asking to increase its return on equity from 9.9% to 10.75% to steer more profits to its shareholders.

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“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,” Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement. “My office will carefully scrutinize this rate hike request …. To ensure DTE isn’t padding our bills with bloated or unjustified expenses that do nothing to improve reliability and only serve to fatten the wallets of their executives and shareholders.”

DTE contends it needs the $574 million to invest in infrastructure and improve reliability, with the goal of reducing power outages by 30% and to restore service 50% faster by 2029, according to Planet Detroit.

“We already pay the highest energy costs in the Midwest for the worst reliability, period,” Bob Allison, deputy director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement cited by MLive. “Our bills are too damn high, and this latest request – mere months since the last increase – is a slap in the face to Michiganders that are struggling to afford their bills.“

The MPSC, comprised of three members appointed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, will review the rate hike request along with input from Nessel and other stakeholders through a series of hearings that typically stretch on for a year before the commission makes a determination.

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The MPSC in February approved a plan that could require Consumers and DTE to pay fines of up to $10 million if the companies don’t cut down on power outages in the coming years, a move inspired by roughly 934,000 customers who lost power in a Feb. 2023 ice storm, according to MLive.

The plan, which would provide the $10 million as performance bonus if outages decline, followed an audit by Liberty Consulting Group released in September that found both DTE and Consumers were “worse than average” in terms of power outages, restoration delays, and tree-trimming in both 2022 and 2023.

The Liberty report trailed analysis of data from the research nonprofit Climate Central last year that showed Michigan residents suffer more and longer power outages than all but two states, despite paying 11% more for their monthly bill than the U.S. average, Bridge Michigan reports.

The analysis found only Texas and California – the top two states for population – have recorded more major power outages impacting 50,000-plus customers than Michigan, putting the state ahead of all others in the Great Lakes region and states routinely impacted by hurricanes, such as Louisiana and Florida.

DTE’s April request – the company’s fourth in five years – came just weeks after Consumers Energy, the state’s other monopoly energy provider, submitted its own request for a rate hike a week before its last approved request kicked in.

“By allowing Consumers Energy and DTE to file a new rate hike every twelve months, the State is allowing these billion-dollar businesses to ask for more and more before anyone can even gauge the impact of the previous rate hike,” Nessel said in a statement. “Meaning they’re back asking for more money before anybody knows if their proposed investments made any difference in reliability or affordability for customers.”

The repeated requests to fund investments in “the electric grid of the future” aim to fulfill Whitmer’s climate goals, which call for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 and 100% “clean energy” by 2040.

The clean energy standard, which was approved by Democrats in the state legislature in 2023, “will lower household utility costs, create tens of thousands of good-paying jobs, and protect Michigan’s precious air, water, and public health,” according to a statement from the governor when she signed the standard into law.

In the months since, Michigan’s monopoly utilities have pursued billions in rate increases, while tens of thousands of Michiganders have lost their jobs as the state’s unemployment rate has swelled to 5.5%, the second highest in the nation.

DTE’s most recent request is one of its largest in two decades, second only to the company’s $622 million ask in 2023, the year Whitmer signed her clean energy standard into law.