Nessel filed a petition for rehearing Thursday with the Michigan Public Service Commission. She contended the commission lacks the statutory authority to approve the contracts without taking them through a contested process, which would allow the AG's office and other groups to intervene in the case and ensure ratepayers are protected.
"I remain extremely disappointed with the commission's decision to fast-track DTE's secret data center contracts without holding a contested case hearing," Nessel said in a statement. "This was an irresponsible approach that cut corners and shut out the public and their advocates. Granting approval of these contracts ex parte serves only the interests of DTE and the billion-dollar businesses involved, like Oracle, OpenAI, and Related Companies, not the Michigan public the Commission is meant to protect."
Representatives from DTE Energy and Related Digital did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
On Dec. 18, the three-person public service commission unanimously approved a pair of special contracts between DTE and Green Chile Ventures, a subsidiary of Oracle.
The contracts allow DTE to provide electric service to the hyperscale data center that the tech giants are building on a 250-acre tract of farm land Saline Township and allow the companies to finance a battery storage facility that will help power the facility, which will demand 1.4 gigawatts of power, roughly as much power as 1 million homes.
Commissioners included some special conditions on the contracts they argued would protect ratepayers from cost increases associated with the data center. They required DTE to track the costs of serving the data center, ensure the data center owner pays for those costs and agree to send less power to the data center in the event of an electricity shortage, for example. They gave DTE 30 days to accept those conditions.
That 30-day timeline makes it difficult for her office or other parties to decide whether to challenge the case, Nessel said. She filed a petition for rehearing "in part to preserve her arguments concerning the issues surrounding the commission's unclear conditions and legal justification for granting review and approval of these special projects on an ex parte basis."
Nessel said she is seeking clarification on the special conditions commissioners placed on the Detroit-based electric company. The conditions appear to require only that DTE assure they are being followed "with no further evidentiary support or commitment," Nessel said, and it's unclear how they will be enforced.
Nessel said she is also concerned that DTE will be able to protect ratepayers from the fallout if the data center owner fails to make its required power purchases, goes bankrupt, or abandons the project early.
"As Michigan's chief consumer advocate, it is my responsibility to ensure utility customers in this state are adequately protected, especially on a project so massive, so expensive, and so unprecedented," she said. "As my office continues to review all potential options to defend energy customers in our state, we must demand further clarity on what protections the Commission has put in place and continue to demand a full contested case concerning these still-secret contracts."
Urgency was baked into the data center case when DTE presented it to commissioners on Oct. 31. DTE asked for a decision by Dec. 5 because the tech companies, anxious to start building, were allowed to terminate the agreements if they weren't signed by that date.
Related Digital will start full construction in the first quarter of this year, spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz previously told The Detroit News. Equipment is staged on the property and some land movement has started.
The case was high profile. People submitted more than 5,000 online comments on the proceeding and hundreds logged in to a public hearing in early December.
During the hearing, commenters representing economic development and labor groups voiced support of the data center, and many others asked commissioners to take the case through the lengthier, contested process.
"I'm not going to fight AI, I'm just pointing out the fact that your powers (allow you) to, if nothing else, deny the ex parte and make this an open, public hearing," Biaohua Yu of Detroit said during the hearing. "I think it's fair with this new technology that everyone should have the right to have a public, transparent process."
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