A report by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), the nonprofit organization that oversees our power grid, said Michigan could be facing power shortages in July and August.
Michigan is moving away from coal or thermal powered electricity and the state is pressing to use more and more wind and solar power.
“The reality for the zones that do not have sufficient generation to cover their load, plus their required reserves, is that they will have increased risk of temporary, controlled outages to maintain system reliability,” MISO’s CEO said.
Local 4 also spoke with Tradition Energy Analyst Gary Cunningham.
“This time we’ve had even more retirements of old generators, and we’re not building enough new ones. The ones that we are building, to be candid, the intermittent wind and solar, are not always there when we need them,” Cunningham said.
Cunningham said from a consumer perspective, those zones may also face higher costs to procure power when it is scarce.
Cunningham said an example can be found on your DTE Energy or Consumers Energy bill, where you’ll find a capacity charge. Customers might pay $1 a month now, but when the summer hits, it’s likely to go up to $5 or even $10.
DTE Energy and Consumers have both said they are confident they will have plenty of power this summer.
Katie Carey, the Director of External Relations for CMS Energy and Consumers Energy said their internal experts use “powerful modeling software to predict how the energy landscape will look in the short-term and in the coming decades by considering a wide variety of future scenarios and assumptions about factors such as market prices, energy demand and levels of clean energy resources, including wind, solar, demand response and energy efficiency. This allows us to reliably forecast how much energy Michigan’s homes and businesses need.”
Click here to read the full press release from MISO.