This year, the Alpine Power Plant turned 10.
In June 2016, Wolverine brought the newest, largest, and most efficient natural gas plant online near Elmira, Michigan, after just 18 months of construction. A project like it today would take at least seven years.
At the time, Wolverine's members needed about 200 megawatts of new generation. After a lot of planning and consideration by the Wolverine Board, the plant that was built was more than double that immediate need: 432 megawatts. A key driver for that decision was that the "extra" capacity cost roughly $40 million more to build, with the belief that members would continue to grow into the "extra" space.
That belief has more than paid off.
Built Ahead of the Need
Since 2016, Wolverine's membership has grown, and a new member cooperative, Thumb Electric, joined the family. Most of the "extra" 200 megawatts Wolverine built a decade ago isn't "extra" anymore. If Wolverine had to build that same 200 megawatts today, the $40 million Wolverine spent then (2016) would be $400 million now (2026), a 10x increase.
Alpine's workload has grown right along with it. The plant was expected to run 30 to 45 days a year. Today it runs 90 to 120, roughly three times its original expectation, because the regional grid increasingly needs generation that can respond quickly when demand spikes, other resources fall short, and many more power plants have retired.
Value Back to Members
Then there's the financial side of the birthday math. Alpine's total project cost was about $190 million. Over the past decade, the plant has generated approximately $270 million in net power cost reduction for our members by selling power into the market.
That amount exceeds Alpine's total project cost by about $80 million. As a not-for-profit cooperative, Wolverine credits member cooperative power bills each month from the net revenue created when Alpine runs.
None of this was guaranteed in 2016. Nobody could have predicted exactly how fast the grid would change, how Wolverine's membership would grow, or how much harder and more expensive it would become to build new generation.
What Wolverine and its members did was plan for the long-term needs of the membership and trusted that was the right plan for both then, and now.
Happy birthday, Alpine. You were built for a future that showed up right on schedule.
