The Michigan Public Service Commission approved a resource plan for Consumers Energy Co. June 23 that allows the utility to cease burning coal in 2025.
The settlement agreement, reached in April with a range of stakeholders, resolves outstanding issues associated with the CMS Energy Corp. subsidiary's 2021 integrated resource plan, including the closure of three units at the 1,458-MW J.H. Campbell coal-fired power plant in Ottawa County in 2025. Under the plan, Consumers would replace Campbell with gas-fired and renewable power. That strategy includes purchasing the 1,176-MW combined-cycle Covert facility in Van Buren County in 2023, which will add 1,114 zonal resource credits to the Midcontinent ISO's Zone 7 from the PJM Interconnection LLC, which serves southwest Michigan.
The IRP also stipulates that Consumers will not advance to 2023 the previously announced retirement of the 1,728-MW Dan E. Karn Generating Complex's gas- and fuel-oil fired units 3 and 4 in Bay County and instead continue to operate them through May 2031. The utility will also continue with plans to add about 8,000 MW of solar generation by 2040.
Consumers will accelerate deployment of energy storage resources from 2030 to 2024, aiming for 75 MW of storage by 2027 and 550 MW by 2040, and conduct two solicitations for 700 zonal resource credits of capacity from power purchase agreements with terms up to 10 years, according to a June 23 news release by the PSC. (Case No. U-21090)
The settlement agreement covers issues including the utility's avoided cost methodology under the federal Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, the continuation of a financial compensation mechanism incentive for power purchase agreements and approval of regulatory asset treatment for the remaining net book value of the company's retiring plants.
Consumers will donate $5 million in 2022 to a fund that provides income-based energy bill assistance to electric customers, along with $2 million in continued annual donations. The donations will be made by the company and its shareholders and will not be recovered through rates paid by consumers.
"The Clean Energy Plan is a sea change that positions our company as a national leader and empowers us to deliver reliable energy while protecting the plant for decades to come," Consumers Energy President and CEO Garrick Rochow said in a statement.
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