Michigan Commission Initiates Grid Integration Study

The Michigan Public Service Commission directed its staff to establish a Distribution System Data Access workgroup as part of the MI Power Grid effort, a multi- year initiative launched in 2019 to maximize the benefits of the transition to clean, distributed energy resources for consumers.

In light of the increasing proliferation of distributed generation resources and electric vehicles, the commission staff is tasked with convening utilities, DG contractors, EV charging infrastructure providers, and other stakeholders to explore topics of interest. Among the key topics, the workgroup is required to develop a method to study bi-directional hosting capacity, identify data-related and privacy-related considerations, and pursue a grid integration study as requested in Senate Resolution 143 passed in 2020.

The U.S. Energy Department’s Grid Modernization Initiative will provide technical assistance to the staff in conducting the study.

The commission noted that the outlook on DG and EV growth is a key driver for the study to provide enhanced access to circuit-level distribution system data. Distributed generation, which accounted for a mere 0.1 percent of Michigan’s retail electricity sales at the end of 2020, has grown every year from 2006 to 2021. At the end of 2020, the DG program capacity exceeded 90 megawatts, an increase of about 37 percent over the previous year. There has been a growing interest in pairing DG systems with battery storage, with electricity providers reporting 769 DG program participants with battery installations for a total storage capacity of more than 4 megawatts. As of 2022, all the state’s utilities, except Upper Michigan Energy Resources Corporation, have implemented “in-flow/out-flow” tariffs for new DG customers.

Among initiatives that support EV expansion, the MI Healthy Climate Plan aims to achieve 2 million EVs on the road by 2030, a marked increase from the current market share. In 2020, only 0.62 percent of vehicles sold in Michigan were EVs.

The commission staff will hold stakeholder meetings on Aug. 16 and 22. The grid integration study must be completed by Dec. 31, 2022