LANSING – The Michigan Public Service Commission on Tuesday directed four natural gas utilities to participate in a collaborative proceeding dealing with the creation of a gas choice price comparison website and invited alternative gas suppliers, other regulated natural gas utilities, and others to participate.

The directive (Case U-17580) was specifically pointed at Consumer Energy Company, DTE Gas Company, SEMCO Gas Company and Michigan Gas Utilities Corp. (the four natural gas utilities where choice is available to customers in their service territories).

All participants will have until April 4 to submit a letter to the commission’s executive secretary indicating the identities and contact information for their representatives that will be part of the collaborative. The executive secretary will then inform participants of the details for the first meeting and will post event details in this docket, the commission said in a statement.

The collaborative will finish its work by June 30. A report on the collaborative’s findings and recommendations will be filed by July 22 and the public will have until August 5 to comment on the commission’s report.

RATE INCREASE FOR MICHIGAN MOVERS ASSOCIATION: The PSC also approved an 8 percent rate increase for intrastate services rendered by Michigan Movers Association members effective April 1.

In April 2013, the MMA informed the PSC that it was requesting the increase to Tariff 4000, the first in seven years. The PSC approved the request and directed the MMA to file a proposed training schedule on tariffs (Case T-1869).

SETTLEMENT AGREEMENTS: The commission also approved three settlement agreements that authorize Cloverland Electric Cooperative, Midwest Energy Cooperative and Thumb Electric Cooperative to implement their power supply cost recovery plans for the 12-month period ending December 31, 2014.

Cloverland will implement a recovery factor not to exceed 4.08 mills per kilowatt-hour for each month of the plan year based on a 64.15 mills per kilowatt-hour basing point (Case U-17313).

Midwest will implement a recovery factor of up to 5.96 mills per kilowatt-hour in its monthly bills to retail electric customers during the plan year (Case U-17314), and Thumb Electric will implement a factor of negative 8.15 mills per kilowatt-hour for each month of the plan year (Case U-17316).

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