Most Michigan solar advice treats the state as one market. It is not. The Lower Peninsula is split between two large investor-owned utilities with different default rate structures, different peak windows and different ways of administering the same state program — plus a scattering of municipal utilities and co-ops that run their own rules altogether. The panels do not care who bills you. The numbers do.
If you are comparing proposals, the first thing to check is not the panel brand. It is the logo on your bill.
First, confirm who actually bills you
Roughly speaking, DTE Electric serves southeast Michigan — Detroit and its suburbs, the Thumb, and pockets running north — while Consumers Energy covers most of the rest of the Lower Peninsula: Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Flint, Saginaw, the Lansing suburbs and much of the north. But the map has holes. Lansing proper is served by its own Board of Water & Light, Traverse City by Traverse City Light & Power, and large rural areas by co-ops such as Cherryland and Great Lakes Energy — each with its own solar tariff and its own interconnection rules.
That matters because a solar proposal is only as good as the rate it was modelled on. If a design assumes DTE’s peak pricing and you are a Consumers customer, the savings estimate is wrong before the first panel goes up.
The default rates are built differently
Both utilities now put every residential customer on a time-based rate by default. The shapes are not the same.
DTE’s standard residential rate is Time of Day, 3–7 p.m. On weekdays, electricity used between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. is billed at the on-peak price — currently about 24.1¢ per kilowatt-hour in summer (June through September) and about 20.1¢ the rest of the year — while everything else, including all weekend usage, is off-peak at roughly 18.4¢ year-round. A four-hour weekday window, every month of the year.
Consumers Energy’s standard rate is a Summer Peak Rate. From June 1 through September 30, weekday usage from 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. is billed at roughly 24.5¢ per kilowatt-hour, off-peak summer usage at about 19.7¢, and from October through May the rate is a flat 17.6¢ with no peak window at all. (Consumers quotes these before its power supply cost recovery factor, access charges and surcharges; the all-in figure on your bill is higher.) So: a five-hour window, but only in summer.
For a solar owner, the difference is not academic. Solar production peaks around midday and fades by late afternoon — in both territories, a good share of the expensive window falls after your panels have stopped covering the house. Under DTE, that gap exists twelve months a year and is worth about 5.7¢ per kilowatt-hour more in summer than off-peak. Under Consumers, it is worth about 4.8¢ more, exists for four months, and then disappears until the following June.
Both use inflow/outflow — but read the credit line carefully
Michigan replaced true net metering with the Distributed Generation program, an inflow/outflow structure administered by the Michigan Public Service Commission. Power you draw from the grid (inflow) is billed at your full retail rate. Power your panels send back (outflow) is credited at a lower figure tied to the power supply component of your rate — not the full retail price. That is the single most important number in a Michigan solar proposal, because it means a kilowatt-hour you use yourself is worth considerably more than one you export.
Both utilities work this way, with two differences worth knowing:
- DTE’s outflow credit (its Rider 18) is calculated from the power supply portion of your rate including power supply cost recovery, applied as a credit that banks forward month to month indefinitely and can offset every charge on the bill except securitization surcharges.
- Consumers Energy’s outflow credit is set at its power supply rate including transmission, and since the 2023 energy law took effect in February 2024, Consumers applies DG credits against all electric charges on the bill rather than only the power supply portion — which, for some customers, makes the same exported kilowatt-hour go further.
The exact cents-per-kilowatt-hour figures change with each utility’s rate case, so treat any number you read online — including here — as a snapshot. What does not change is the ratio: exports are typically worth somewhere between a third and a half of what you avoid by consuming the power yourself. Design for self-consumption first.
The 2023 law raised the ceiling — for everyone
Michigan’s Public Act 235 of 2023 rewrote several DG rules that used to worry buyers. The statewide participation cap rose from 1% to 10% of each utility’s average in-state peak load, which removed the old fear of a utility “closing” its program. And the size limit on a system rose to 110% of your electricity consumption over the previous 12 months — enough headroom to plan for an EV or a heat pump you have not bought yet. The MPSC finished approving the updated utility tariffs in 2025.
Both DTE and Consumers operate under those same limits. Where they differ is in process.
Interconnection: same fee, different paperwork
Neither utility lets you switch on before it says so, and both require the application to go in before installation begins.
DTE takes applications through its PowerClerk portal for a $50 fee for a typical residential system, assigns the project to a Fast Track, Non-Export or Study track, and — a detail that catches people out — requires the homeowner, not the installer, to sign the Interconnection Agreement electronically. After installation and the local electrical inspection, the installer uploads the inspection approval and photographs of the inverter and disconnect, and a DTE technician makes a site visit to test the system and set the disconnect to “on.” That visit is your permission to operate.
Consumers Energy also charges $50 for a Level 1 (≤20 kW) application through PowerClerk, but closes the loop with paperwork rather than a visit for most small systems: a Commissioning Test Report and a signed Generator Interconnection Operating Agreement are the gate. Consumers says it answers inquiries within about five business days; the overall timeline in either territory depends on queue volume and how clean the submission was.
In practice, a well-prepared residential project in either territory runs weeks, not days, from application to permission to operate — and the utility step, not the roof work, is where schedules slip. A proposal that promises a switch-on date without naming the utility and its current queue is guessing.
What this does to battery sizing
Here is where the two utilities really diverge.
A battery in Michigan earns in two ways: it keeps the lights on through an outage, and it shifts your midday solar into the expensive window so you buy less peak power and export less at the low outflow credit. The second job depends entirely on the rate shape.
- Under DTE, the target is a four-hour weekday peak that exists all year. A battery sized to carry the house from 3 to 7 p.m. — typically the furnace blower or air conditioner, refrigeration, cooking and lighting — does useful work in January as well as July, and the winter peak premium, though smaller, is still there.
- Under Consumers, the target is a five-hour weekday peak that exists only June through September. In summer the battery has a longer window to cover and a slightly larger spread to capture; from October to May there is no peak to shift into, so its economic job shrinks to avoiding low-value exports and its main role becomes backup.
The result is that the same house can justify a different battery in the two territories. A Consumers customer who wants a battery mainly for outages might reasonably size it to the critical loads and the longest realistic outage. A DTE customer can often justify a larger unit because it works the rate arbitrage twelve months a year. Neither answer is wrong; they are answers to different questions.
Where the answer is the same
Some things do not change at the utility line. The federal residential credit for homeowners who pay cash ended on December 31, 2025, in both territories; the federal value that remains flows through third-party ownership structures and the Energy Community bonus, and eligibility for that is decided by address rather than by utility. Winter production drops to a fraction of summer across the whole state, so sizing for the year — and for the month the ice storm arrives — is the same discipline whoever bills you. And in both territories, a system designed to what you actually consume, with self-use maximised and exports minimised, beats a bigger system designed to a round number.
Get the model run on your utility, not on “Michigan”
The right solar design starts with a bill, not a brochure. It reads which utility you are on, which rate you are actually billed under, when your peak window is and what your exports are worth today — and it sizes the array and any battery to those numbers rather than to a state average.
Ready to take control of your energy costs and protect your home from Michigan’s frequent outages? Request a free, no-obligation quote from Stellar Solar Michigan — serving Michigan homeowners with solar and battery storage since 1998, A+ rated with the BBB — or call 858-395-6905.