LANSING – The Michigan Agency for Energy announced support Wednesday of a plan by American Transmission Company that would eliminate certain payments for the White Pine electric generator in the Upper Peninsula.

The announcement comes two days after a federal judge issued a proposal that Wisconsin Energy Corporation owed ratepayers some $17 million for running the Presque Isle Power Plant due to “massively” overcharging them (See Gongwer Michigan Report, July 25, 2016). Both the Presque Isle case and White Pine involve system support resource payments to regional operator Midcontinent Independent System Operator to keep the plant running for MISO’s purposes of ensuring electric reliability across the grid in several states, including Michigan.

The SSR payments to the White Pine facility that ATC has proposed to eliminate cost ratepayers in the U.P. about $7.3 million each year, a statement from the agency indicated.

ATC’s proposal would modify its transmission system in the northwestern U.P. from the current network configuration to two radial configurations and make corresponding changes to its operating procedures. The changes eliminate the need to run White Pine as an SSR unit and comply with North American Electric Reliability Corporation reliability criteria and the MISO tariff.

That proposal allows similar reliability without running the White Pint plant, which is more than 60 years old and runs on coal, the MAE said.

In a letter to the MISO, the agency said it supports ATC’s plans to reconfigure its electric transmission system and revise its system operating guide in the northwestern U.P. The modification would return ATC’s system to the way it was configured prior to 1998.

“MAE encourages MISO to accept ATC’s system reconfiguration proposal without delay,” MAE Executive Director Valerie Brader said. “I applaud the problem-solving that led to this solution. I wished all stakeholders had gotten more warning early on so there would have been time to develop and implement this solution before costs started to go up and litigation was needed.”

The White Pine case is one of several SSR payment dockets the state has challenged.

Should MISO support ATC’s proposal, it would mean no Michigan generators would be supported by SSR payments, MAE said. Otherwise, the White Pine SSR is anticipated to continue until 2020 or until an alternative solution is in place.

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