Consumers Energy has selected AMEC, with Michigan offices in Novi and Traverse City, to represent the company as the owner’s engineer for the decommissioning program for the planned retirement of seven operating units at the utility’s three oldest coal-fired generating plants.
AMEC, an international engineering and project management company, has experience with power plant decommissioning.
The power plants being decommissioned have an average operating lifespan of more than 60 years with seven operating units, which Consumers Energy plans to retire by April 2016. The units are located at the Karn/Weadock complex in Essexville; the J.R. Whiting site in Erie; and the B.C. Cobb site in Muskegon.
Collectively, the seven units being decommissioned represent about 950 MW of electric capacity. Consumers Energy recently announced its plan to purchase a 540 MW natural-gas power plant in Jackson to partially offset the planned retirements.
Consumers Energy, Michigan’s largest utility, is the principal unit of CMS Energy (CMS), providing natural gas and electricity to 6.5 million of the state’s 10 million residents in all 68 Lower Peninsula counties.
