Could a power line connecting Michigan and Wisconsin below Lake Michigan be a clean energy solution?

Wind farms in the Great Plains generate so much electricity that utilities not only charge low rates for it but sometimes even pay utilities and electric cooperatives to draw electricity from them, helping to avoid overloads and blackouts on the local power grid.

Wolverine Power Cooperative officials want access to this renewable energy source that is a treasure trove of gold for their customers, but there is no physical way to ship those electrons all the way to Michigan. At least not yet.

What if a high-voltage transmission line were built under Lake Michigan, connecting the major power infrastructure on both sides of the Great Lake?

Wolverine executives have proposed that regional grid operators consider a concept they call a potential renewable-energy “superhighway” that would navigate Michigan’s geography as a peninsular state.

“We’re not as connected to other markets and geographies as other states in the Midwest and Central Plains,” said Eric Baker, Wolverine’s president.

Most of the incoming energy comes from Indiana and Ohio, limiting the ability of energy providers in Michigan to source more renewable energy for their customers.

In recent years, Michigan’s energy sector has struggled to build enough renewable energy sources, such as wind farms and solar fields, to compensate for past and planned closures of large energy suppliers such as coal-fired plants.

Experts say that’s because a patchwork of solar and wind ordinances at the municipal and county level create hurdles for individual cities that make it difficult to rapidly expand Michigan’s renewable energy fleet, which is needed.

At this rate, Michigan will miss one of its top climate goals — transitioning to carbon-free energy by 2040 — which was passed into state law last year.

But access to large amounts of cheap wind power from the Dakotas, western Iowa and Minnesota could prove to be a game-changer for Michigan’s energy portfolio, Baker said.

“We’re trying to come up with something completely different that would provide access to the Upper Plains and create something like a renewable highway,” Baker said.

“This creates diversity, which I think will be crucial at a time when we will increasingly rely on other, more irregular resources.”

Wolverine has proposed two potential options: connecting the Wisconsin nuclear plant to the Ludington Pumped-Storage Hydroelectric Plant in Ludington, or connecting the now-shuttered Palisades Nuclear Power Plant near South Haven to the Milwaukee grid.

The Ludington facility acts like a giant water battery and could potentially be used to store energy from across the lake, whether it’s wind power from the Upper Plains or nuclear power from a plant in Wisconsin. That energy could then be released into the grid during times when Michigan’s own wind and solar sources aren’t generating as reliably.

Another option would be to connect the two states’ 345-kilowatt circuits to increase the flexibility of the regional power grid, regardless of whether the Palisades plant ever restarts, which its owner, Holtec International, has proposed to federal regulators.

The idea of ​​an underwater connection has its merits and could benefit wider grid coverage, according to a senior official at the regional power grid operations organization.

The Lake Michigan Connector concept could help solve serious transmission problems, said Jeremiah Doner, director of cost allocation and competitive transmission at the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO).

“We try to start with a big set of ideas, looking at where the future is headed and what are the potential transmission solutions that can support it,” Doner said.

“That was one of the ideas we looked at as we thought about how, given that Michigan is a peninsula, how do we increase the strength of the connections to Michigan, both in terms of imports and exports.”

That said, a high-voltage DC underwater cable would be very expensive and could take up to 15 years to build. But it could be less complicated than trying to run a long-distance transmission line around or through the Chicago metropolitan area and into Michigan, Doner said.

The Lake Connector proposal is included in MISO’s latest long-haul transmission plan, known as “Tranche 2.”

The agency’s first round of such plans was approved nearly two years ago and is expected to cost $10 billion. It included two projects with routes to Michigan.

This latest, second round of proposed long-haul transmission plans included more than $23 billion in projects in 11 states. It required so much work for engineers that MISO split the proposals into two sections; the Lake Michigan Connector concept is expected to be evaluated for feasibility during this final period next year, officials said.

At least one Michigan energy leader said he sees potential grid reliability benefits from a high-voltage line under Lake Michigan.

Dan Scripps, chairman of the Michigan Public Service Commission, agreed that such a connector line to the lake would bypass Chicago’s power-transmission planning problem and allow Ludington’s pumped-storage facility to potentially offset the state’s growing use of intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar.

“I don’t want to prejudge the project,” Scripps said. “It would be a very difficult project to locate because it’s an unprecedented project in crossing Lake Michigan, but I certainly think it’s worth investigating.”

The lake connector project would require approval from state and federal environmental regulators.

But not everyone in the energy industry thinks building a large power line under Lake Michigan is a good idea.

Consumers Energy, the utility that co-owns and operates the pumped-storage facility, said it is trying to understand the implications of the Lake Michigan Connector proposal, but “there are too many unknowns at this point to support something of this nature.”

Wolverine delivers electricity in the Lower Peninsula to five rural distribution cooperatives, one retail cooperative serving commercial and industrial customers, and one renewable energy company.

More than 60 percent of the electricity the cooperative provides to its members comes from renewable or nuclear sources. Wolverine purchases power from other suppliers and operates seven gas-fired peaking plants across the state.

Part of the reporting work for this article was funded by a scholarship Institute of Journalism and Natural Resources.

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