Michigan’s energy storage landscape just changed significantly. The Michigan Public Service Commission approved contracts for six battery energy storage projects on Friday, collectively representing more than 1,300 megawatts of new storage capacity — and one of the largest projects in that group is coming to Huron County.
The approved projects are the 450 MW Big Mitten Energy Center, the 350 MW Monroe I Energy Center, the 200 MW Fermi Energy Center, the 132 MW Fish Creek Energy Center, the 100 MW Cold Creek Energy Center, and the 100 MW Pine River Energy Center. Together they represent a substantial and deliberate investment in Michigan’s ability to store electricity generated from cleaner sources and deploy it when demand is highest.
For the Thumb region, the most directly relevant piece of news is the Big Mitten Energy Center — a 450 MW facility that will be located in Huron County under a 20-year tolling agreement. That is a long-term, major commitment of energy infrastructure to a county that has been at the center of Michigan’s green energy development conversation for months.
How the Six Projects Break Down
The six approved facilities fall into two distinct groups based on their purpose and ownership structure.
The first three — Big Mitten, Monroe I, and Fermi — are the larger-scale projects designed to fulfill the settlement agreement in DTE Electric’s most recently approved integrated resource plan. Together they will provide a combined 1,000 MW of energy storage capacity. The Big Mitten Energy Center in Huron County is the largest of the three at 450 MW and will operate under a 20-year tolling agreement. Monroe I and Fermi are self-build contracts, meaning DTE Electric will own and construct those facilities directly.
The remaining three projects — Fish Creek at 132 MW, Cold Creek at 100 MW, and Pine River at 100 MW — serve a different and more specific purpose. These facilities are owned and operated by DTE Electric and are designed to serve the 1,383 MW data center being developed by Green Chile Ventures LLC in Washtenaw County. The Cold Creek, Fish Creek, and Pine River projects represent the first 332 MW of a total 1,383 MW of company-owned energy storage that Green Chile Ventures is contractually required to develop to match the data center’s power demand. The equipment supply agreements for battery modules and the master service agreements for engineering, procurement, and construction have all been approved alongside the project contracts themselves.
What Battery Energy Storage Actually Does
Battery energy storage facilities are not power generation plants — they do not produce electricity. What they do is store electricity that has already been generated, hold it until it is needed, and release it into the grid at the right moment. That function has become increasingly critical as Michigan and other states add more renewable generation to their energy mix.
Solar panels generate electricity only when the sun is shining. Wind turbines generate only when the wind is blowing. Both sources are variable by nature, which creates a fundamental challenge for grid operators who need to balance supply and demand continuously. Battery storage bridges that gap — capturing excess generation during periods of high output and low demand, then releasing it during periods of low generation and high demand. The result is a more stable, more reliable grid that can absorb renewable generation without the reliability problems that intermittency would otherwise create.
At the scale being approved here — hundreds of megawatts of capacity — battery storage also plays a role in grid resilience during extreme weather events, equipment failures, or other disruptions that affect generation or transmission capacity. A grid with substantial battery storage backing it up can maintain reliable service through disruptions that would otherwise cause outages. That resilience benefit is particularly relevant in Michigan, where severe winter and summer weather events regularly stress the electrical grid.
What the Big Mitten Energy Center Means for Huron County
The arrival of a 450 MW battery storage facility in Huron County is significant news for a region that has been navigating a wave of green energy development with mixed reactions from local communities and officials. Large-scale energy storage projects bring construction jobs, permanent operational employment, property tax revenue, and infrastructure investment that can benefit a county for the duration of a long-term agreement. A 20-year tolling agreement is not a short-term commitment — it is a two-decade relationship between the facility and the grid it serves, and by extension between the project and the community hosting it.
At the same time, Huron County has been grappling with how to manage the pace and scale of green energy development across its townships. The Huron County Board of Commissioners approved a controversial solar zoning amendment earlier this year that drew significant public opposition, with residents raising concerns about local control, land use, and the county’s master plan. The arrival of a major state-approved battery storage project adds another dimension to that conversation — large-scale energy infrastructure is coming to Huron County, and the question of how communities manage, benefit from, and live alongside that infrastructure is one that local officials will be working through for years.
The Big Mitten project also connects directly to the work being done in townships across the region to establish regulatory frameworks before development arrives. Colfax Township recently adopted a one-year data center moratorium specifically to allow time to develop regulations governing large-scale technology infrastructure. Grant Township approved extra pay for its zoning administrator to handle the volume of solar, battery, and wind applications already moving through its permitting process. The MPSC’s approval of the Big Mitten Energy Center is the state-level decision that sets these local-level conversations in motion.
The Data Center Connection
The three smaller storage projects — Cold Creek, Fish Creek, and Pine River — reveal something important about how Michigan’s energy infrastructure is evolving in response to data center demand. Green Chile Ventures’ 1,383 MW data center in Washtenaw County is an enormous power consumer, and the state is requiring the developer to fund the battery storage capacity needed to support that demand rather than simply drawing on existing grid infrastructure.
That requirement — making data center developers responsible for matching their contracted demand with dedicated storage capacity — is a significant policy approach. It ensures that large-scale data center development does not simply increase pressure on a grid that was not designed to support that load without also investing in the infrastructure needed to manage it. Michigan lawmakers have been debating a proposed one-year pause on new data center construction over concerns about grid capacity and the pace of development — the MPSC’s approach of requiring dedicated storage for the Green Chile Ventures facility represents one possible model for how that concern can be addressed through regulatory requirements rather than development pauses.
For Michigan residents and energy policy followers who want to track the MPSC’s approval process and review the full documentation on the six approved battery storage contracts, the Michigan Public Service Commission maintains publicly accessible case filings, commission orders, and project approval records for all regulated utility proceedings in the state. And for those wanting a deeper understanding of how large-scale battery energy storage works and what its role in grid stability and renewable integration looks like nationally, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity provides comprehensive resources on energy storage technology, policy, and deployment across the country.
