Keeping the Lights On: Energy shortages pose a threat to summertime comfort in northern Michigan

By Jillian Manning | June 4, 2022

What do you get when you combine a hot summer, more folks on the grid, and a shift in energy sources?

Tony Anderson, general manager of Cherryland Electric Cooperative, says the equation could add up to a perfect storm for utility companies in the coming months. In a recent blog post on the Cherryland website, Anderson raised the alarm to his members about a report from the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO)—a regional transmission organization that serves the Midwest and part of Canada—that found Michigan and surrounding states would be 1,200 megawatts short when it comes to supply and demand this summer.

Depending on how that perfect storm plays out, the shortage might be mitigated with simple actions on the part of utilities and their customers. Or—in a worst-case scenario—it could result in rolling power blackouts on hot summer days.

“As a utility, I have two choices: I can shut up and hope I get through summer, or I can warn people and start preparing. And that’s what we’re doing,” Anderson tells Northern Express.

Likewise, Traverse City Light and Power (TCLP) put out a public service announcement last week detailing the energy shortage and offering steps their customers can take to lower both energy use and their bills. Executive Director Brandie Ekren says the utility would prefer to “under-promise and over-deliver” than to keep their customers in the dark about a potential issue.

“I wouldn’t say that [the MISO report] is a hollow notice,” she says. “I think it’s a real one. But I feel that Traverse City is prepared.”

Mega What?
For those with a hazy memory of middle school science, 1 megawatt equals 1,000,000 watts—enough energy to power hundreds of homes per year. And though northern Michigan is in the midst of a housing crisis, there are still a lot of homes in need of energy, whether that’s because more folks are working remotely or because they are using a seasonal retreat all year.

“COVID comes, everybody goes home, and electric usage spiked,” Anderson says. “But it hasn’t gone down. 2020 was an all-time high. 2021 beat that. And we’re on pace in 2022 to beat that. At the same time, [energy] generation is going down.”

Anderson says Cherryland has enough generation for all their members—who live in Leelanau, Grand Traverse, Benzie, Kalkaska, Wexford, and Manistee counties—but the energy game is not always so straightforward.

“The problem is we’re connected to a 15-state grid where all that energy is just dumped into one tub,” he explains. “Some utilities don’t have enough capacity, so they use our capacity, or our plants are running more than they need to to make up that capacity.”

Shutting Down
The need for more generation is complicated by today’s shift in energy sources. Michigan is at something of a crossroads as the state moves away from fossil fuels toward renewable sources. Though both Cherryland and TCLP are working hard to go greener, trouble can crop up when older plants are being shut down before new ones are online.

“Old coal plants have aged out, some nuclear plants have aged out, and also some people have gotten excited about retiring stuff early and transitioning to renewables,” Anderson says. “Nothing wrong with the transition to renewables—we just need to have them up and operating before we shut stuff off. Well, that’s not been happening. We’ve not been building enough new generation to keep up with what’s being retired.”

Environmental factors in Michigan put an added strain on the reliability of renewable sources. Solar suffers during the cold and overcast months of winter and needs a lot of land to build plants. Wind is at the mercy of weather patterns, and Anderson says that July in Michigan—our hottest month when we need the most generation—is typically not a very windy time.

Ekren shares a similar concern about how the shift toward renewables is taking shape. She explains that “reducing what you would call dispatchable or baseload generation does have a significant impact on energy supply. We call it dispatchable because you can turn it on anytime of the day—you can turn it on when it’s sunny, when it’s not sunny, when the wind is blowing, and when it’s not blowing.” Dispatchable fuel resources include nuclear, coal, and natural gas.

“When you look at the available resources available to meet those [summer] load demands, they are becoming scarcer and scarcer,” she adds. “Summer is always a high demand—it’s always the most critical season.”

The bottom line? The generation shortage is not something that can be immediately resolved—especially as we move toward more electrification of daily life with electric cars and remote work. Instead, it is likely to be a recurring concern until more renewable sources are up and running.

Feeling the Heat
But generation isn’t the only issue giving folks like Anderson and Ekren pause. Rising temperatures also pose a threat to energy supply and demand, and according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), we’re in for a hot summer. In their April 2022 Climate Science and Services Monthly Climate Update, NOAA predicted that most of the U.S. should expect above-average temperatures in June, July, and August.

More heat means more air conditioning, one of the biggest stressors on the energy grid. (Heating and cooling can account for up to 45 percent of a home’s energy use, beating out appliances, lighting, and having Netflix streaming all day.) And it’s looking like warmer temperatures are going to be our new normal: Earlier in the year, NOAA announced that 2013-2021 have been nine of the 10 hottest years on record—the outlier is 1998—dating back to 1880.

2022 is anticipated to join the ranks of the top 10, though where it will fall is not yet certain. So far, we’ve been trending hot: January ranked as the 6th hottest January record, February at 7th, March at 5th, and April tied for 5th.

Admittedly, it didn’t feel too toasty up here in northern Michigan during that stretch, but May was a different story. The National Weather Service in Gaylord reported that on May 10, 11, and 12, Traverse City set three straight record-high temps ranging from 92-96 degrees F. Other towns around the North did the same.

Energy plants run overtime when a utility gets a “maximum generation alert,” aka when all generation needs to be on to meet the demand. Anderson says that 10 years ago, Cherryland might have received one max gen alert in a year, and they typically arrived on an extra-hot day in July or August. Recently, that annual number has climbed to double digits, and Anderson says that during the spring heat wave, Cherryland received what might have been the utility’s first-ever max gen alert in May.

Going Dark
So what happens if those dark stars—more usage, lower generation, and higher temps—align and we are indeed short on electric supply this summer? A dire situation could involve rolling blackouts, but Anderson thinks it’s unlikely we’d get to that point.

He explains that the first step for Cherryland would be to ask members—95 percent of whom are residential customers—to voluntarily reduce their energy use. Curtailing electric usage during peak hours, which Anderson identifies as 5pm-8pm, would be the goal.

“That might be enough to get us by this summer,” he says. “It’d be as simple as that: people paying attention, people [being] educated, and people volunteering.”

Simple is right: When asked for tips on how to cut energy use, Anderson recommends easy solutions like waiting to run a load of laundry until outside the peak hours or changing your AC settings from 68 to 74. He says these measures are especially important on the hottest days when energy is in the highest demand. While that might mean a few extra drops of sweat or waiting a day on chores, it would push back the need for a more serious approach.

“The next step would be a rolling scenario where I take this line and I shut it off for two hours,” Anderson explains. “That two hours is up, and then I go to the next one. … We just would roll through the peak period, or the peak day, a couple hours at a time.” (Hospitals and other emergency services would be excluded.)

TCLP has a similar plan in place, though Ekren stresses that a great deal of preparation has been done by the utility for scenarios like this one. Not only that, but they’ve also been working with their customers for years on changing energy habits and upgrading appliances to make homes and businesses more energy efficient, so TCLP users may have something of a head start.

“Another thing I might suggest is that if there’s an opportunity to have an energy audit done, take the advantage of getting an energy audit in your home,” she recommends.

Consumers Energy, which serves 62 counties in the Lower Peninsula, also weighed in on their approach to the energy shortage. “We feel confident that we have the energy supply needed to provide our customers with the energy they need this summer,” Josh Paciorek, media relations specialist for Consumers says. “We have a diverse mix of energy resources that we can fall back on to make sure that we have the energy needed to supply power to our customers even in the hottest days of the summer.”

He adds that in the unlikely event of a shortage, Consumers first goes to “large industrial customers” to cut back on energy use before asking the same of residential users.

No matter how the summer plays out, at the end of the day, Anderson says the sky isn’t falling. “We’ll figure this out,” he says. “We’re going to be okay. But the potential is there. So it’s my job to tell people about the potential.”