LANSING – The much-discussed electric capacity gap that will arrive in 2016 in the Lower Peninsula affects the reserve available and would not mean immediate shortages, an official with the Mid-Continent Independent System Operator said Wednesday.

Melissa Seymour, regional executive for state and customer affairs at MISO, told the House Energy Policy Committee on Wednesday that historically, the 15 states and one Canadian province within MISO, which helps assure sufficient capacity throughout the region, have had a surplus of energy.

But now, with the retirement of coal fired plants as well as the shift of a power plant to a different market, that surplus is dwindling.

“We have enough resources to serve load, but the cushion is what we’re starting to see diminish,” she said. “It’s not that we’re signaling that the lights are going to go off.”

That said, Seymour said the situation is of concern, saying it increases the odds of an outage when demand is highest and is keeping her up at night.

Seymour said about 15 percent of the coal capacity within the MISO service area will be retired by 2016 as a result of new federal environmental regulations.

By 2016, MISO projects a doubling of the standard risk level as a result of the reduced capacity.

Wayne Kuipers, executive director of Energy Choice Now, distributed a letter to committee members pushing back on arguments from utilities that Michigan faces a capacity shortage as a result of insufficient power generation.

He pointed to comments from a MISO official in October that attributed the capacity issue in Michigan to a lack of commercial deals to contract for additional power, not the need for more generation.

The Energy Policy Committee’s continued hearings on Michigan’s energy law and situation come as Governor Rick Snyder prepared to announce his energy proposal later this month.

NESBITT PLAN TO BE UNVEILED THURSDAY: Rep. Aric Nesbitt (R-Lawton), chair of the Energy Policy Committee, will unveil his energy proposal at a media roundtable.

FREEDOM FUND BACKS FULL COMPETITION: The Michigan Freedom Fund has started a petition urging support for allowing full competition on the electric market instead of the current limit that restricts competing companies to 10 percent of the market with the rest reserved for incumbents like DTE Energy and Consumers Energy.

The petition, dubbed “Free the Volts,” contends that Michigan’s monopolistic system has resulted in higher prices.

DTE and Consumers have contended the existing system has failed because while they have to actually generate the energy, the competing companies are protected from paying market-level prices.

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