University of Michigan / Los Alamos research facility

The project

Electrical demand

100 MWannounced

Capacity stated by the developer or the host municipality

Developer

University of Michigan with Los Alamos National Laboratory

End user

University of Michigan

Serving utility

DTE Electric

Site size

144 acres

Expected online

Groundbreaking set for 2027

Grid, generation or storage

The university says it is paying for a dedicated DTE substation for the facility, on a 6-acre site on Rawsonville Road.

Water

On 22 April 2026 the Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority imposed a moratorium of not less than 12 months on delivering, committing, reserving or approving water and sewer service to data centers and high-performance computational centers.

Also on the record

The university expects to use around 50 MW when the facility opens and to ramp to the 100 MW being planned over several years. It describes the project as a research computing facility, not a commercial data center.

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. March 18, 2026The university closed on the 124-acre Textile Road parcel, bringing its holdings there to about 144 acres. Charter Township of Ypsilanti
2. April 22, 2026The Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority voted 4–0 for a water and sewer moratorium covering data centers and high-performance computational centers. Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority
3. July 10, 2026The university wrote that no final site had been selected and that it was evaluating two Ypsilanti Township locations, Textile Road and Willow Run, and that it was moving from evaporative to closed-loop cooling. University of Michigan
4. August 13, 2026University President Domenico Grasso wrote that Textile Road had emerged as the location best able to meet the project's requirements. University of Michigan

Where the sources disagree

Earlier reporting said the utilities authority had refused cooling water at the Ypsilanti Township site and that the university had turned to an alternative site in Superior Township. The university’s July 2026 letter names only two candidate sites, both in Ypsilanti Township, and its August letter chooses Textile Road; Superior Township no longer appears in the university’s account. Separately, the township’s own information page records a 19 August 2026 township moratorium on large utility structures by headline only, without its terms, so it is not listed as an event here. Reported cost runs from $1.2 billion to $1.25 billion and is not asserted.

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 University of Michigan / Los Alamos research facility. 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] How many AI data centers are planned in Michigan? We counted. — Gander Newsroom, read October 23, 2026
2. [2] Data Center Information — Charter Township of Ypsilanti (primary document), read October 23, 2026
3. [3] Letter from U-M President Domenico Grasso to Rep. Debbie Dingell, 10 July 2026, with answers to residents’ questions on site selection, power, water and acreage — University of Michigan (primary document), read October 23, 2026
4. [4] Letter from U-M President Domenico Grasso to Rep. Debbie Dingell, 13 August 2026 — University of Michigan (primary document), read October 23, 2026
5. [5] YCUA Resolution 26-08, moratorium on water and sewer services for data centers, adopted 22 April 2026 — Ypsilanti Community Utilities Authority (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.