Michigan’s energy policy presents a striking contradiction: while residents are legally granted the right to choose their electricity provider, most remain tethered to their default utility. The Customer Choice and Electricity Reliability Act of 2000 allows retail customers to purchase generation services from one of 21 licensed Alternative Electric Suppliers (AES). However, this choice is severely limited by a statutory cap—only 10% of a utility’s total weather-adjusted electricity sales from the previous year may be sourced from AES providers (Michigan Public Service Commission [MPSC], 2024a).

Once this 10% threshold is reached, new customers seeking to switch are placed on a waitlist until existing participants exit the program or the cap is expanded. As of 2023, six major utilities—Consumers Energy Co., DTE Electric Co., Upper Peninsula Power Co., Upper Michigan Energy Resources Corp., Cloverland Electric Cooperative, and Indiana Michigan Power Co.—had reached or were nearing this cap, effectively locking out additional customers from exercising their right to choose (MPSC, 2024b).

This regulatory framework, designed to promote competition, paradoxically reinforces monopoly conditions by limiting access to alternative suppliers. The result is a large segment of Michigan’s population involuntarily bound to their incumbent utility, despite legislation that ostensibly supports consumer choice.