How to Switch Your Electricity Supplier in Michigan: Steps

1. Confirm that you can enroll. Michigan caps retail choice. Ask your utility if any room is open under its cap, and if any licensed supplier is taking residential customers in your area.
2. Find what you pay now. Your bill shows what your utility’s regular bundled service costs you. Any offer has to beat it over a full year.
3. Compare licensed suppliers. Use the commission's lists of licensed suppliers by utility, then ask each supplier for its residential price, term and fees.
4. Get the terms in writing. Ask for the price, whether it is fixed or variable, the term, every fee, the early termination fee and what happens at renewal.
5. Enroll, or join the queue. If there is space under the cap, the supplier enrolls you. If there is none, the utility places you in a queue and you stay on utility service until a slot opens.
6. Watch your first bills. Check that the supplier name, the price and the start date match what you were told, and keep every confirmation.
7. Mark the end of the term. Put the renewal date in your calendar so a price change never catches you by surprise.

These points come from the regulator or its official shopping site, or from the supplier disclosure language that its rules require. Each names where it was read.

• Michigan law limits retail choice to 10 percent of each electric utility’s average weather-adjusted retail sales from the previous year. Source: Michigan Public Service Commission, electric choice annual report.
• The commission’s February 2026 report says the program remained at or near the cap in 2025 and that thousands of customers were in the queue waiting for space. Source: Michigan Public Service Commission, news release, Feb. 2, 2026.
• You pick a licensed alternative electric supplier, and the supplier enrolls you if there is space under the cap. If there is none, you are placed in the utility’s queue. The commission publishes lists of licensed suppliers by utility. Source: Michigan Public Service Commission, licensed suppliers.

Source: Read on October 10, 2026. Rules and supplier lists change, so use the regulator link below for the current text.

We could not confirm these points from an official page, so we do not state a number for them. Ask the supplier, read the contract and check with the Michigan Public Service Commission.

• Whether your utility has room under its cap right now
• Whether any licensed supplier is enrolling residential customers in your area
• The date of your next default price change, so you compare offers against the right number

The average Michigan home used 635 kWh a month in 2025, or about 7,618 kWh a year. At that use, every 1 cent per kWh of difference between an offer and what your utility charges for bundled service changes the yearly bill by about $76. A gap of 2 cents is about $152 a year, and 0.5 cents is about $38.

Those numbers shrink or grow with your own use. A monthly fee of $5 adds $60 a year, which can erase a small price gap. Run your own numbers with the electricity bill calculator, and compare fixed and variable plans with the fixed vs variable rate calculator.

Switching does not change the company that owns the lines and the meter. In Michigan, the largest investor-owned utilities by residential customers in 2025 were:

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-861 (final 2025 data), residential customers. Call your utility for outages whichever supplier you use.

Keep your contract, your confirmation and any call notes. If you think you were switched without permission, tell your utility and your regulator right away. The Michigan Public Service Commission takes complaints about suppliers.

Be wary of anyone who says they are from your utility and says you must switch, who asks for your account number before you have seen a contract, or who will not give you the price and fees in writing.