Sault Ste. Marie – When the Cloverland Electric Cooperative of Sault Ste. Marie was ordered by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) and Wisconsin Electric to pay $22 million in System Support Resources payments for the cooperative’s share of paying for the operation of the Presque Isle Power Plant, Cloverland appealed the payment amount to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Cloverland’s SSR payment was reduced to $9.8 million.

Cloverland published an online legislative alert (cloverland.com/legislative-alerts/) placing the blame for unreasonable SSR payments on a Michigan Act.

“This has nothing to do with rates; it has nothing to do with being member regulated; it has nothing to do with a board decision – it has everything to do with one sentence quietly inserted in Public Act 286 in 2008,” the website states.

The section of PA 286 Cloverland refers to is Section 10a (d), which reads:

“Notwithstanding any other provision of this section, any customer operating an iron ore mining facility, iron ore processing facility, or both, located in the Upper Peninsula of this state, shall be permitted to purchase all or any portion of its electricity from an alternative electric supplier, regardless of whether the sales exceed 10 percent of the serving electric utility’s average weather-adjusted retail sales.”

The Cloverland site explained that when Cliffs Natural Resources began purchasing electricity from an alternative source due to dissatisfaction with electrify costs, “Wisconsin Energy lost 80 percent of their load and faced with a $115 million operating budget and costs to install EPA-mandated clean air equipment, announced the plant would close.”

MISO intervened and determined the power plant could not close without putting U.P electric reliability in jeopardy. WE then agreed to keep the plant in operation, providing it did not pay for the operating costs. The result was MISO levying SSR payments on electric suppliers in the Upper Peninsula in addition to existing rate charges.