Metrobloks Southfield

The project

Electrical demand

100 MWreported estimate

Estimate reported by a third party, not confirmed by the developer

Developer

Metrobloks LLC

Serving utility

DTE Electric

Site size

12 acres

Building area

218,000 sq ft

Expected online

2027

Grid, generation or storage

Metrobloks is working with DTE to build a new electrical substation at its own expense.

Water

Closed-loop cooling, which the city says results in minimal long-term water use.

Also on the record

The city says a data center is a permitted use in the Regional Center district, so the site plan did not require a formal public hearing.

Last checked October 23, 2026. Every field above has been confirmed against the sources listed.

What has happened

Every entry carries the source it came from. Where the record gives no date, the entry says so rather than being placed by guesswork.

1. December 15, 2025City Council took up PSP25-0009, Metrobloks' site plan review request for a data center on a vacant Inkster Road lot (parcel 24-18-351-011). The city's 2025 Planning Commission annual report lists the site plan as approved, with a development value of $500 million. City of Southfield

Where the sources disagree

Cleanview lists 100 MW; EDRA of Michigan lists roughly 30 MW for the same building. Neither the city’s statement nor its annual report gives a capacity, so neither figure is settled. Separately, EDRA gives 109,000 sq ft against the city’s roughly 218,000 sq ft in a two-story building, which reads as one floor against two; the city’s figure is used.

Published rather than resolved. Picking a favourite number and printing it alone is how a tracker becomes an opinion.

How this compares to the load DTE Electric already serves

Running at 100 MW for a year at 85% capacity factor works out to roughly 745 GWh a year. Every household DTE Electric serves used 15,132 GWh between them in 2024. This one site is therefore about 5% of what every home in the territory uses.

Computed, not quoted. No filing states this figure. The denominator is residential sales only — DTE Electric’s total system load, including commercial and industrial customers, is considerably larger, so this is not a share of the whole grid. The capacity factor is an assumption. The arithmetic is 100 MW × 8,760 hours × 0.85, against 2024 EIA-861 residential sales.

What DTE Electric customers pay, before and now

Those figures are DTE Electric’s own EIA-861 filings and they cover the whole territory. This page does not attribute any part of that change to Metrobloks Southfield. It could not honestly: the change spans years in which this project did not exist, rates move for generation costs, storm recovery, tree trimming and approved return on equity all at once, and the large-load terms the Commission has approved are written specifically to keep these costs off other customers’ bills. Whether they succeed is an open question in front of the Commission, not a settled fact this site can assert.

What actually did change DTE Electric rates, case by case →

The terms a large load takes service under here

DTE Electric operates under U-21990, approved December 18, 2025. Approved special contracts for electric service to the Saline Township data center, with conditions — a contract-by-contract approval rather than a general tariff.

Contracted demand

Roughly 1,383 MW.

Contract length

A power supply agreement of roughly 19 years, extendable by the customer for a further 20, plus a separate 15-year energy storage agreement.

Conditions imposed

Cost allocation and rate design proposals ensuring future large-load interconnection customers pay their own interconnection costs, plus an administrative fee for further large loads.

The Attorney General's motion to reopen and her separate petition for rehearing were both denied on 27 March 2026. On 17 April 2026 she filed a claim of appeal in the Michigan Court of Appeals, seeking to invalidate the approval as an unlawful ex parte order and to remand the matter for a contested case hearing. The proceeding is not closed.

• Michigan Public Service Commission: MPSC approves DTE Electric energy contracts for data center with conditions to strengthen protections for other customers
• Michigan Department of Attorney General: Attorney General’s Efforts to Review DTE Data Center Contracts Rejected Again At MPSC
• Michigan Department of Attorney General: AG Nessel Files Appeal of MPSC Approval of DTE’s Saline Data Center Contracts

Sources

Everything above traces to one of these. Local agendas and FAQ pages get replaced in place rather than archived, so each carries the date it was read.

1. [1] Michigan data center tracker — Cleanview, read October 23, 2026
2. [2] Map of AI data centers in Michigan — EDRA of Michigan, read October 23, 2026
3. [3] City of Southfield Statement Regarding Proposed Data Center, 19 December 2025 — City of Southfield (primary document), read October 23, 2026
4. [4] City Council December 15 Regular Meeting Agenda, item G: PSP25-0009 — City of Southfield (primary document), read October 23, 2026
5. [5] 2025 Planning Commission Annual Report, approved 28 January 2026 (p. 3: PSP25-0009, 27252 Inkster Rd, Status: Approved) — City of Southfield (primary document), read October 23, 2026

Watch the docket this project runs through

Large-load contracts, tariff changes and the cases contesting them all arrive as DTE Electric filings. Alerts go out when one is filed and when a comment deadline is set — which is the only window in which a comment counts for anything.