Dive Brief:
- A first-of-its-kind “supplemental” municipal utility began installing solar and battery systems last week for residential customers in Ann Arbor, Michigan, one of its suppliers said on April 28.
- The pilot phase of the Ann Arbor Sustainable Energy Utility, or A2SEU, will see solar-plus-storage deployments on about 150 homes this year and up to 1,000 homes in 2027, according to FranklinWH, the company supplying the utility with a combined battery and inverter system.
- FranklinWH’s system will pair with solar panel installations from Michigan Solar Solutions, Homeland Solar, and Oak Electric Service, and eventually form a utility-scale virtual power plant with support from Texture’s energy management platform, FranklinWH said.
Dive Insight:
The homes participating in the pilot program are located in Ann Arbor’s Bryant neighborhood, where A2SEU held a March meeting seeking residents willing to become its first customers.
Bryant has more energy-burdened residents than Ann Arbor as a whole, with some locals spending upwards of one-third of their household income on utility bills, FranklinWH said. Neighborhood median income is well below the citywide average, according to local media outlet MLive.
At the meeting, Jordan Larson, engagement innovator with the city of Ann Arbor’s Office of Sustainability and Innovations, showed a chart illustrating how enrolled homes would self-consume some of the power generated by their panels and store the rest in batteries for discharge during the evening and overnight hours.
“All of the work in this project is focused on reducing total energy costs,” Larson said.
In 2024, nearly 80% of Ann Arbor voters approved a referendum to create a city-owned utility that would help accelerate the city’s clean energy goals and boost local resilience. The Bryant solar-plus-storage pilot is the first step toward a future that A2SEU says could feature microgrids, geothermal heating and cooling networks, and energy justice initiatives for the roughly 125,000 inhabitants of the university town 40 miles west of Detroit.
“Unlike a traditional utility, we are only going to offer renewable energy products, including solar and geothermal that will come later to this neighborhood and hopefully all around the city,” Shoshannah Lenski, A2SEU’s executive director, said at the March meeting.
A spokesperson for DTE Energy, the investor-owned utility that serves Ann Arbor, Detroit and surrounding communities, said it supports A2SEU’s sustainability goals in a statement comparing the municipal program to DTE’s own voluntary clean energy program.
“When coupled with DTE's planned investments in clean energy, these voluntary, fee-based programs help accelerate economy-wide decarbonization while maintaining reliability and affordability,” Ryan Lowry, the spokesperson, said in an email.
A2SEU says energy storage will help its subscribers ride through power outages and — along with other onsite power generation — boost overall system reliability by “[minimizing] the need for distribution systems (e.g., poles and wires), which are currently the most vulnerable part of the existing energy system.”
A 2025 report from the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan, a utility watchdog group, found Michigan’s power grid experienced longer-duration outages over the past five years than all but a handful of other states. DTE is spending billions to upgrade its distribution grid and says its reliability has improved significantly since 2023.
Lowry said DTE’s “five-year, $270 million plan to modernize the electric system that serves the city” helped it deliver “the best electric reliability Ann Arbor has experienced in nearly 30 years” in 2025.
For the time being, A2SEU enrollment is optional for Ann Arbor residents and its generating resources supplement rather than replace DTE’s assets. But a citizen group calling itself Ann Arbor for Public Power is gathering signatures for a November ballot initiative that could start the years-long process of creating a full-fledged public utility in the city. DTE has spent nearly $2 million opposing the effort, according to financial disclosures reviewed by MLive.
Lowry said “municipalization” in Ann Arbor would cost residents and taxpayers $1 billion upfront and increase energy bills in the city by a “minimum” of 30% to 40%, per a DTE-commissioned report released in early 2025.
