WHITE PINE – “This plant will close operations on Nov. 26, if this isn’t stopped,” said Zach Halkola, chief operating officer of PM Power Group Inc. which owns and operates the White Pine Electric Company.

Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which oversees the electric grid in the upper Midwest, asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last week to close the White Pine plant in November.

If the request is granted, ratepayers would not have to make System Support Resource (SSR) payments totaling $7 million annually until June 2018, the Michigan Agency for Energy recently said in a press release. Halkola estimates the payments cost individual rate payers $2.50 per month and are vital to the facility’s existence.

Meanwhile, a separate plan to build two new natural gas-fueled plants, with a total generating capacity of 170 megawatts, through a collaboration involving Cliffs Natural Resources and WEC Energy Group would also result result in the discontinuation of White Pine’s SSR designation, the Marquette Mining Journal reported Sept. 9.

MISO’s request is based on a solution proposed by American Transmission Co., which owns most of the electric transmission network in the region. WEC Energy Group controls a 60 percent majority ownership in ATC.

“A lot of the energy policy that’s being proposed is to eliminate independent power producers, eliminate alternative electric supply (ATS) companies and move back towards a fully regulated market,” Halkola said.

If the power plant shuts down, Halkola said 20 people in the office and plant would lose their jobs.

“That’s difficult,” Halkola said. “It seems like a double whammy to Ontonagon. We’re asking the ratepayers of the U.P. to let their voices be heard in Lansing (by telling the governor and Michigan Agency for Energy) that our reliability is important and we should be able to exist until the appropriate generation, transmission and infrastructure is built.

“We couldn’t afford to do that without the revenue from the SSR stream,” Halkola said. “Those are the payments that keep the facility alive. People should demand transparency.”

Ontonagon County Board of Commissioners supported WPEC in a Sept. 7 letter to Gov. Rick Snyder, Michigan Agency for Energy and MISO, noting it was not informed of the proposed closure.

“We struggle with the fact that (neither) MISO, ATC nor the governor’s office have been transparent about this plan, did not inform us of their abrupt about-face of the reliability requirements and have pushed their proposal forward without subjecting it to the close scrutiny and analysis that it deserves, or to consideration by the stakeholders who will be adversely impacted by it,” Ontonagon County Clerk Stacy Preiss wrote on behalf of the county board.

“We have always trusted that our system would become more reliable with time, not less,” the letter said. “Although we struggle with the complexity of the change, we do appreciated the goal of lower electrical costs, and the long-term solution of generating more power in the U.P. while maintaining jobs.

“However, we cannot accept a degradation of electric reliability in our area because it will have a potentially devastating impact on our residents that will jeopardize the health and survival of our most rural residents who depend on a continuous and reliable power source for their daily lives,” the letter said, “We urge MISO and ATC to reconsider this proposal and,at a minimum, reassess its plan by applying at least as rigorous study as it did over the past two and a half years when it repeatedly found that the White Pine 1 SSR Agreement was needed to provide electric reliability in the area.”

For more information, visit White Pine Electric Power on Facebook or at whitepineelecctric.com/index.html.