One coal plant provides nearly as much power as all of Michigan's wind machines

Why did the US Energy Secretary have to be the one to make the tough call to keep it open? Why didn't either of Michigan's last two Democratic governors do this?

At the end of last month, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright ordered Michigan’s J.H. Campbell power station to stay open through at least the rest of the summer. The coal -fired facility was slated to close less than two weeks later, despite its importance, which I covered in a recent report for The Midwesterner:

Last year, according to the Energy Department, the combined output of Michigan’s wind power was 9,764 GWh.

Yet the J.H. Campbell power plant produced 8,228 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of electricity in 2024.

Just that one, six-decade-old, coal plant that few of us will ever see generated 6.5% of all the electricity generated in all of Michigan in 2024, and 84% of the power output of every wind turbine already spinning (when they’re spinning, that is).

Wind turbines, as the joke goes, are like strippers: They only work if you throw money at them.

The map above is from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) December 2024 reliability report for the American electricity grids. The December 2023 NERC report had the same map with the same red blotch of doom over the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO) electrical grid.

Those living in the red places are at “high risk” of blackouts during merely “normal peak conditions.” A normal “peak” is what we call “a hot summer day” in Michigan, and most of the state is in the high risk red.

The

Energy Bad Boys

and others have been warning about this blackout risk since the 2023 NERC report.

As they and others have noted, those unreliable wind turbines are a big part of the problem. Replacing coal with wind destabilizes grid reliability and replacing a lot of coal with wind is how you create blackouts.

As the Bad Boys explained last summer:

In the last few years, Illinois, Michigan, and Minnesota have enacted legislation requiring that 100 percent of electricity come from carbon-free electricity, and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers signed an executive order to the same effect.

As I explained in The Midwesterner, this is what Gov. Whitmer did the month before the first NERC report:

In November 2023, Gov. Whitmer boasted of signing legislation to build out Michigan’s weather-dependent power infrastructure towards the goal of “100% clean energy” by 2040.

“The Clean Energy & Jobs Act puts Michigan on a path for some of the fastest buildout in the nation of renewable energy, like wind and solar,” said a Michigan League of Conservation Voters official, quoted in the Whitmer news release.

The Energy Secretary at the time of this fiasco was former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, a person so incapable of understanding energy abundance that she literally sang along in a video with anti-energy zealots cheering for the end of gasoline.

So, Granholm was not going to— and did not—do anything to protect the vulnerable MISO grid from blackouts, and kicked the can down the road for another year.

Thankfully, Chris Wright wasn’t going to kick that can any further down the road to darkness. According to CNN: “Wright’s May 23 emergency order cited concerns the Midwest could face a summer electricity shortage due to a lack of available coal, gas and nuclear plants that can provide stable baseload power.”

Please read the full story about Michigan’s power emergency and the politicians who have been indifferent to it:

Whitmer should do ‘hard things’ to ensure the lights stay on

And check out the Energy Bad Boys reports on the MISO grid and the importance of coal:

Ten Slides on the Looming Mess in MISO (August 2024)

This RTO Could See Blackouts By 2028 (March 2025)

Chris Wright is Right: Keep the Coal Plants Running (February 2025)