Power Supply Portfolio
Securing a Diverse Energy Portfolio
A diversified power portfolio enables our community to meet customer needs for reliability and affordability while also advancing our goals for sustainability and environmental stewardship.
2025 Energy Portfolio
Why Energy Diversity
Much like a mutual fund or retirement plan stabilizes gains and mitigates risk through diverse investments, we can ensure greater affordability and reliability for our power supply by contracting for capacity and energy from a range of networked resources. This includes supply from renewables like wind and solar, or more traditional market purchases that do not specify the source of the power to be sold.
GHBLP carefully works with our Market Participant, the Michigan Public Power Agency (MPPA), to select energy partners and short and longer-term power purchase agreements that support our community’s values of diversity, energy risk management, fiscal and environmental responsibility.
28% Renewable by 2025
Customers in our community have consistently identified a preference for renewable energy as an important component in GHBLP’s power supply portfolio, so long as it does not negatively impact stable rates or overall affordability. We have recently secured, through our partnership with the MPPA, several long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with regional wind and solar providers that will increase our renewable component to 28% of the system’s energy requirements in 2025, well above Michigan’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) for such supply.
We don’t plan to stop there. As both solar and wind become more economical components in our overall power supply portfolio, we will continue to aggressively pursue higher levels of renewable integration.
Working Together
GHBLP represents just one small system in a statewide, national and global effort to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and steward our climate future. As members of the MPPA, we collaborate with other like-minded municipal utilities on joint action projects in planning, transmission infrastructure, and renewable projects.
One such project is the $250 million Assembly Solar Project, the largest in Michigan, which when completed will span 1,200-acres and provide 239 megawatts of power. GHBLP, along with others at MPPA, has a 20-year commitment to purchase the output from this project.