NOVI – As the largest owner and operator of the high-voltage electrical grid in Michigan, ITC transports energy from generators to local retail distribution utilities throughout the Lower Peninsula. We connect all forms of energy to the grid.
Much of the new generation coming online these days is wind energy. Our 140-mile Thumb Loop transmission line project in the Thumb region is facilitating a great deal of the new wind generation in our state. It is being constructed as a result of Michigan?s Clean, Renewable and Efficient Energy Act (Public Act 295), which created the Wind Energy Resource Zone Board to study and identify regions with the highest wind potential. As the Thumb Loop builds out to its completion next year, more and more wind farms, along with some solar, are coming online to meet public policy requirements for renewable energy.
Upgrades to the transmission system such as the Thumb Loop provide benefits beyond just plugging wind farms into the grid. These system improvements make the grid stronger, more reliable and more flexible by increasing the grid?s capacity. And since power can flow in both directions along transmission lines, a more robust grid can mean increased capacity and improved access to power in areas where system upgrades have been made. And that?s good news for business development in Michigan.
One of the best examples of this involves what is now the state?s biggest wind generator, the 200-megawatt Gratiot County Wind Farm in the middle of the Lower Peninsula. With enough energy to power 54,000 homes, connecting this massive facility to the grid quickly became a complex and challenging system upgrade project.
The high-voltage grid in that area had been in place for decades without many improvements, and it was operating at near capacity. Injecting another 200 megawatts of energy into the grid at that location required significant new facilities and upgrades. Multiple paths were needed to move the wind farm?s energy onto the grid efficiently.
ITC engineers developed a comprehensive plan that included new substations in Gratiot and Midland counties, along with reconstruction of approximately 10.7 miles of an existing 138,000-volt (138 kV) line and construction of a new double-circuit, 138 kV line approximately 2.4 miles long connecting to another ITC 138 kV line.
ITC executed this complex interconnection project on schedule and on budget, allowing the Gratiot County Wind Farm to ramp up its production on schedule. An important by-product is that the Gratiot County area benefits from a more robust grid. The improved access to reliable power that these transmission system upgrades bring is helping support efforts by Greater Gratiot Development, Inc., to attract new businesses such as data centers that require large supplies of high quality power to operate reliability and efficiently. According to their president Don Schurr, the increase in capacity, reliability and power quality has become a key element in their efforts to attract more new businesses to Gratiot County, particularly those that have very large or exacting power quality standards.
ITC?s $2.6 billion of investments in the Michigan grid over the past 11 years, including upgrades to connect new generation, have made our Michigan systems among the most reliable in the country and improved the flexibility of our grid to meet tomorrow?s demands.
Tom Vitez is Vice President of Planning at Novi-based ITC Holdings Corp., the largest independent electricity transmission company in the country. ITC owns and operates high-voltage transmission systems in Michigan?s Lower Peninsula and portions of Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas and Oklahoma.
