Citizens Utility Board of Michigan

The Upper Peninsula Energy Task Force has submitted to Governor Whitmer its formal recommendations on how to avoid a propane crisis in the region, where over 18% of households use propane, primarily for heating, compared to just under 8% for the Lower Peninsula.

Photo Source: Jenn Hill

The Upper Peninsula Energy Task Force just finished accepting comments on its draft report about how to supply the UP with propane given the possibility of supply disruption. Over 1,000 discrete comments have poured in on the task force’s work since it began, Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) Director Liesl Eichler Clark said during an April 13 meeting (Read CUB’s previous blog post with links to earlier coverage of the task force).

Public comments have closed on the Upper Peninsula Energy Task Force’s draft report on how to avoid price spikes in propane used across the UP for heating, especially in the case of a Line 5 shutdown. (Links to our previous blog posts are here, here, here, here and the first here.

All of the public comments submitted on draft report will be considered at the task force’s next meeting on April 13, which will still take place as a virtual meeting.

Percentage of Households with Propane, Draft of “Analysis of Propane Supply Alternatives for Michigan,” Public Sector Consultants, March 2020

The developing coronavirus crisis shows how everyday life can be upended by low-probability events. In energy, people are always talking about the importance of “resiliency.” Resiliency essentially means a system’s ability to respond to many different shocks. Events with relatively low probabilities often create the biggest system shocks.

DTE’s Belle River coal plant. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tgrab/16611294377

Last summer the Citizens Utility Board of Michigan wrote about how a utility’s integrated resource plan (IRP) is an important roadmap for the future of the business and its customers. DTE’s long-term plan, proposed last year, could force its 2.2 million customers in southeast Michigan to pay millions on their electric bills for power plants that may be unnecessary. During a nearly year-long period of review, CUB and many other parties, including AG Dana Nessel and groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists and the Natural Resources Defense Council, pointed out the flaws included in DTE’s plan.

Now the Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) has finally reached an initial decision that essentially tells DTE to go back and fix many of the mistakes pointed out by CUB and other groups.

The debate over the future of the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline has been one of the biggest energy and environmental stories for Michigan over the past couple years. The Line 5 controversy was one of the contributing factors in Gov. Whitmer’s decision last summer to form the Upper Peninsula Energy Task Force to examine how the energy-constrained region can confront a number of challenges while keeping heating and power prices under control, including the potential closure of Line 5.

A recloser is a type of electrical equipment used to automatically detect faults on a line. Source: TheEnergeticEngineer, Wikimedia Foundation.

The Michigan Public Service Commission (MPSC) is undergoing a rare review of the standards for electric service quality and reliability, two things that all Michigan households depend upon to have a high quality of life. The Citizens Utility Board (CUB) of Michigan is participating in a Workgroup of utilities and other stakeholders that are advising the MPSC staff on how to update the standards, and any residential customer can get involved too (see our previous blog post about the first Workgroup meeting.)

A settlement between Upper Peninsula Power Co. (UPPCO) – the largest energy provider in the UP – and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and other groups could clear the way for an impressive increase in the amount of renewable energy in the peninsula, as well as in the state as a whole.

Source: Michigan Public Service Commission

Amid mass power outages this past summer in the DTE and Consumers Energy service territories, tens of thousands of Michigan residents learned the hard way that the state badly needs to update its basic standards for electric service. Also, after more recent power outages, DTE COO and President Trevor Lauer recognized in a Dec. 31 interview that “we need to do a better job keeping lights on for our customers.”

Gov. Whitmer’s task force has just over three months left to issue its initial report on propane – the fuel source that 25% of Upper Peninsula customers rely on as their primary source of heating to get through some of the most brutal winter conditions in the lower 48. Nationwide, somewhere around just 6% of households use propane to stay warm at home (based on the National Propane Gas Association’s recent estimate that 7.8 million households use propane for in-home heating).