Michigan PSC finds state’s electricity providers demonstrate sufficient capacity to serve customers through 2025

The Capacity Demonstration Results Reports from Michigan’s various electricity providers covering through 2024-2025 planning year was accepted by the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) last week, meaning all providers will meet reliability requirements.

Michigan requires electricity providers to demonstrate that they will meet peak customer demand through their own generation facilities or contracts with other suppliers four years in advance. It is the only state in the Midcontinent Independent System Operation (MISO) with such a requirement, as MISO only requires a one-year advanced planning period. In theory, Michigan’s move allows providers greater time to build or buy resources to better serve customers and avoid outages and blackouts.

While MISO covers most of the state, PJM Interconnection also covers a portion of Michigan’s southwestern Lower Peninsula.

Michigan’s Capacity Demonstration Results Reports cover capacity demonstrations from investor-owned electric utilities, alternative electric suppliers, rural electric cooperatives, and municipally owned electric utilities to meet the requirements of its regional transmission operators.

For the MPSC, working to maintain sufficient supply also keeps electricity prices down by limiting spikes in prices caused by expensive purchases made when supplies are already limited, as demonstrated most recently by the severe winter storms in Texas. A lack of capacity there led to widespread blackouts and soaring prices.

A new docket for capacity demonstrations from MPSC-regulated electric utilities for the 2025-2026 planning year must be filed by Dec. 1, 2021. Such filings will include resource data for the current planning year, as well as interim years. All other providers will have to provide these details by the end of Feb. 9, 2022.

Last week, among its actions, the MPSC also issued requests for comments on various items, including the Low-Income Energy Assistance Fund and competitive bidding guidelines.