Company: DTK
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form Type: 10-K
Source: 0000936340-25-000065
Chunk: 46

Company: DTE ENERGY CO
Filing Date: 2025-02-13
Form: 10-K
Item: Item 1
Chunk 46
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 solar, wind, and battery storage.  DTE Electric expects this transition to renewables and natural gas to reduce future operating and fuel costs.  DTE Electric will also continue to monitor the advancement of emerging technologies such as long-duration storage, modular nuclear reactors, hydrogen, and carbon capture and sequestration, and how these technologies may support clean, reliable generation and customer affordability.

DTE Electric's distribution operations focus is on distributing energy in a safe, cost-effective, and reliable manner to customers.  An increasing intensity of windstorms and other weather events, coupled with increasing electric vehicle adoption and potential for data centers, will drive a continued need for substantial grid investment over the long-term.  DTE Electric is hardening and upgrading its infrastructure and has plans to build substations to provide additional capacity as customers shift to more electrification, including electric vehicles.  DTE Electric seeks to increase operational efficiencies to maintain rate affordability and increase reliability and customer satisfaction through accelerated tree trimming, pole maintenance, enhanced grid automation to reduce outage duration, and increased underground distribution.

To enhance customer affordability, DTE Electric is also working to optimize opportunities from the Inflation Reduction Act to generate production tax credits for wind and solar production and existing nuclear generation, as well as investment tax credits for solar and energy storage.  DTE Electric expects these tax credits to reduce the cost of owning assets that support its clean energy transition, thereby reducing customer rate impacts from any future cost recoveries.

The electric retail access program in Michigan gives electric customers the option of retail access to alternative electric suppliers, subject to limits.  Energy legislation enacted by the State of Michigan has placed a 10% cap on total retail access.  This cap mitigates some of the unfavorable effects of electric retail access on DTE Electric's financial performance and full-service customer rates.  Customers with retail access to alternative electric suppliers consist primarily of industrial and commercial customers and represented approximately 10%, of retail sales in 2024, 2023 and 2022.  DTE Electric expects that customers with retail access to alternative electric suppliers will remain at approximately 10% of retail sales in 2025 and future years.

Competition in the regulated electric distribution business is primarily from the on-site generation of industrial customers and from distributed generation applications by industrial and commercial customers.  DTE Electric does not expect significant competition for distribution to any group of customers in the near term.

Revenues from year to year will vary due to weather conditions, economic factors, regulatory events, and other risk factors as discussed in the