Consumers Energy Co. has filed a final five-year distribution infrastructure plan to invest $3 billion into its aging system spanning 70,000 miles of wires.
Consumers Energy's electric distribution systems serve about 1.8 million customers and need to be "prepared to support the growth of [distributed energy resources] for both real-time operation and future system planning," the utility said in its 2018 to 2022 plan.
The Jackson, Mich.-based utility filed the plan with the Michigan Public Service Commission on March 1 after taking comment on a draft plan from Aug. 1, 2017. The latest plan divides the $3 billion among unplanned, planned, and operations and maintenance projects. The company has invested about $5 billion over the last 10 years and about $1.4 billion in the last three years.
About $1.4 billion over the five years is allocated for unplanned projects, which include new business connections, emergency system needs, and the relocation of assets. Consumers Energy also allocates roughly $1.3 billion for planned projects of which about half is for reliability-related projects such as pole and substation rebuilding or replacements. The planned projects also include about $50 million to $60 million a year for infrastructure, telecommunications, and grid devices to allow for digital communications and applications that improve control of the grid.
Roughly $200 million a year, or $973 million total, will be allocated for operations and maintenance, including tree trimming and vegetation management.
Consumers Energy's staff said their plan aims to make the distribution system responsive to customer desires for data and managing their consumption. It also seeks to adapt to customers, particularly commercial and industrial customers, desire to adopt renewable energy as part of their sustainability plans.
The CMS Energy Corp. subsidiary was required to file the five-year plan in a Feb. 28, 2017, PSC order. The PSC was concerned about vulnerabilities of the electric distribution system, and thus, required the state's two largest distribution utilities, DTE Energy Co. and Consumers Energy, to file five-year plans that detailed the state of their systems and a path toward greater modernization and reliability.
In addition to the five-year distribution plan, Consumers Energy filed a 2017 year-end report on reliability metrics from its deployment of smart meters. Smart meters, also called advanced metering infrastructure, tend to have more capabilities such as outage communication, power quality monitoring, and more granular energy consumption monitoring, according to the Energy Information Administration. CMS finished installing 2.4 million smart meters in 2017, according to its Feb. 14 fourth-quarter 2017 earnings presentation. The metrics include outage minutes avoided due to use of smart meters.
DTE Energy's five-year plan allocates about $4.2 billion in capital toward its distribution system. Of that amount, about $2.3 billion is dedicated to strategic investments and the remainder is for "base capital" programs such as equipment replacements, new customer connections and customer relocations.
