Environmental Groups' Court of Appeals Brief Itemizes What DTE's Oracle Data-Center Contracts Charge Other Customers: $260M Rate Base, ~$40M First-Year Distribution Increase

The environmental appellants’ opening brief (Michigan Environmental Council, NRDC, Sierra Club; Court of Appeals No. 380334, consolidated with the Attorney General’s Nos. 380362/380364/380878 and GLREA’s No. 380462; MPSC Case No. U-21990) is stamped received by the Court of Appeals on August 6, 2026; Earthjustice’s press release is dated August 7. It supplies the ratepayer-cost itemization that the earlier entries on this appeal (2026-08-06–nessel-appeal-brief-mpsc-dte-saline-cost-allocation-mechanism, 2026-08-10–nessel-earthjustice-appeal-mpsc-dte-stargate-contracts-474m-rate-case) did not carry, each figure with its denominator:

• Substation: DTE estimates $300 million to build; the data-center property owner advances $40 million; the other $260 million goes into DTE’s rate base and is charged to all customers. DTE’s own projected revenue requirement for it starts at $35 million per year and declines as the asset depreciates. DTE acknowledges this raises other customers’ distribution charges by almost $40 million in the first year (the filing line is $39,730 thousand: the $35 million plus about $5 million of tax effects).
• Transmission: $200 million of upgrades projected, first-year revenue requirement $30 million, recovered through the power supply cost recovery (PSCR) clause.
• Total: the brief characterizes DTE witness Neal Foley’s public testimony as showing incremental connection costs “exceeding $500 million” (the $300 million plus $200 million). This is the documentary source behind the “nearly half a billion” phrasing in press coverage; the figure is a projected up-front cost, not a rate increase, and is a separate number from the $474 million general rate case.
• Offsetting claim, as the brief reports it: DTE argues data-center distribution revenues will eventually exceed the substation revenue requirement; the brief says that rests on an “affordability analysis” outside the record, which MPSC staff viewed only on DTE’s read-only website.
• Collateral: the brief says the PSC accepted a parent-company guarantee instead of cash or a letter of credit.

Status as of a 2026-10-26 check of press and agency pages: no oral argument date, MPSC/DTE response brief, or opinion was found. The Court of Appeals’ own docket search was not read (interactive), so absence of a date is unverified at the source.