Consumers Energy, City of Kalamazoo join forces for downtown projects, power reliability

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Changes are coming to West Michigan, and Consumers Energy is working to keep up.

The company’s CEO visited Kalamazoo Friday to discuss upcoming investments, ensure reliability and support growth in the area.

This comes as Consumers Energy and the City of Kalamazoo plan to work together on multiple downtown projects while trying to minimize road closures and other impacts on the community.

“Part of this work is, you know, multi-millions of dollars in investment here in Kalamazoo, undergrounding, new substations, a variety of things to be able to ensure reliability and expansion,” Garrick Rochow, CEO of Consumers Energy said.

Some notable projects in Kalamazoo include rebuilding and expanding the Cooley Substation, and upgrading underground natural gas service along Kalamazoo and Westnedge Avenues downtown.

“Behind that [Cooley Substation] we’ll be building a new substation that’ll serve what’s called the metro or underground system from the City of Kalamazoo, helps to support the growth of the event center and also improves reliability,” Rochow said. “This is just an example of our reliability roadmap, the investments we’re making in Michigan to improve reliability.”

Part of the reliability roadmap, according to Rochow, aims to reduce the number of power outages during a weather event but quickly restore power if an outage does take place.

“We have a large weather event, have no more than 100,000 customers out, and to be able to restore all customers within 24 hours,” Rochow said. “We don’t achieve that standard today, and so that would be leading the industry when we look at other utilities across the nation, so that’s what we mean in terms of reliability. Less outages, and when you do have an outage thanks to Mother Nature, you’re going to be restored a lot faster.”

For City Manager Jim Ritsema, excitement is high for what’s to come between the city and Consumers Energy.

“It’ll be incredible,” Ritsema said. “Downtown is in a renaissance right now, and we’re really excited to see where this all takes. And the spin-off investment too. We’re really excited about how this is going to go over the next few years.”

He continued, ““We’re thankful for the support we’ve received from Gov. Whitmer and state and federal officials. There’s a lot going on, but we also realize we’ve got a community that is suffering too that we need to keep in mind and work with.”

Work is expected to support the two-way street conversion and event center projects.