Starting in March, DTE Energy, energy supplier to 40% of Michigan, will move many customers to a price schedule that includes higher rates for electricity used during peak hours. From 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., Monday through Friday, energy costs will be higher than they are the rest of the week.

• Related reading: Starting in March, DTE will charge peak-hour rate

In the months of June through September, the peak-hour rate will be 20.98 cents per kilowatt hour, or kWh.

That’s just under 2 cents less than the average retail price for residential electricity customers in California in 2021. The price then was 22.82 cents per hour, per the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The DTE price is 1.84 cents per kWh lower.

• Related reading: Don’t California my Michigan

Jason Hayes, the Mackinac Center’s director of environmental policy, said he worries for Michiganders who will soon be faced with higher energy bills.

“In the past, time-of-day systems were made voluntary for customers,” Hayes told CapCon. “Not anymore. They want you to use less energy.”

DTE presents peak-hour billing as a way to “smooth out peaks in demand.”

Starting in March, DTE’s rate for non-peak times will be 15.45 cents per kWh. In October through May, the rate will be 16.75 cents per kWh.

Last week, the Mackinac Center’s Jarrett Skorup took to the Saginaw airwaves to make the case for Michigan’s right-to-work law.

Since March 2013, Michigan has had a right-to-work law, allowing people in union shops to opt out from paying into unions without losing their jobs.

A decade later, Democrats “hold all the gavels” in Lansing, as one legislator put it. Before even taking power, they named right-to-work repeal, which would force workers to pay into unions, as one of their goals. Right-to-work repeal efforts have already been submitted to target private sector workers, as well as public sector workers. There are constitutional issues affecting the public sector bill, due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2018 ruling in Janus v. AFSCME.The court ruled that public sector employees can’t be forced to pay into unions.

Skorup, director of marketing at the Mackinac Center, noted that some companies won’t even open a facility in a state that lacks a right-to-law policy.

“Right-to-work states are growing faster in income, job growth and population growth, and we need it for Michigan to compete,” Skorup argued.

• Skorup on WNEM-TV makes the case for right-to-work in Michigan

WNEM’s James Felton also spoke to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who said a repeal effort is “on the horizon,” but noted that what happens next is in the hands of lawmakers.

One of those lawmakers, State Rep. Amos O’Neal, D-Saginaw, told Felton there is a timeline for the repeal effort, but he did not share it.