Ford's first dedicated solar farm in Michigan is now feeding the grid. State regulators say Ford is supposed to pay for it, not the rest of DTE's customers. DTE Energy (DTE) finished the Cold Creek Solar Park near Coldwater on Oct. 1. It's the first piece of a deal that DTE calls the largest renewable energy purchase from a utility in US history.
Amir Mirshahi, Ford's energy infrastructure director, says the park is "now delivering on the promise we made when we broke ground". The 100-megawatt project was valued at about $194 million when state regulators signed off on its construction contracts in March, local station WTVB reported. Ford (F) pays for the power through DTE's voluntary CleanVision MIGreenPower program.
Why your DTE bill shouldn't feel it
When Michigan regulators approved revised terms for the deal, they raised the contract's pricing. They also required Ford's payments to cover the project's full cost over the life of the contract. If Ford walks away early, the commission said, other customers will be "held financially harmless". That's a rule written into the contract. We didn't find a DTE or commission statement showing how Cold Creek's costs are actually being booked in DTE's rate cases.
We couldn't find Ford's exact price in the documents we read. Regular MIGreenPower subscribers pay a net premium of a couple of cents per kilowatt-hour. Ford's contract works the same way, with a fee and a credit, but at a price Ford negotiated for itself.
The goal has already slipped once
Cold Creek covers only a small part of the plan. The full deal is roughly 650 megawatts, so most of it hasn't been built yet. Ford wants its Michigan-built vehicles to run on the equivalent of fully carbon-free power by the end of 2027. When the deal was announced in August 2022, the target was 2025.
Neither company has said publicly why the date moved. Electrek noted that the new announcement doesn't explain the change, and the statements from DTE and Ford in local coverage don't mention it either. To be fair, Cold Creek itself showed up on time: at the groundbreaking in April 2025, DTE said the park would be running in 2026.
The word "equivalent" is doing a lot of work there. The program matches Ford's electricity use to Michigan renewable output on paper, but the factories still pull power from the same grid as everyone else. DTE's own program page says it can't connect participants directly to the projects, and the wind and solar power goes onto the grid.
Next, watch for DTE to name the next Ford solar parks and say when they'll come online. Those dates will show whether Ford can still hit its 2027 target.
Sources
- 1.Ford backs a big new solar farm for its Michigan factories · Electrek
- 3.DTE Energy breaks ground on new solar park to help meet Ford Motor Company's needs for 100% carbon-free and renewable energy · DTE Energy
- 4.MPSC approves special renewable energy contracts between DTE Electric Co., City of Detroit and Ford Motor Co. · Michigan Public Service Commission (republished by Global Renewable News)
- 5.DTE CleanVision MIGreenPower · DTE Energy
- 6.DTE Energy completes construction of 100-megawatt solar park near Coldwater · WWMT
- 7.MSPC approves DTE Energy application for Coldwater Creek solar park · WTVB
Reported by the WattsUpNext desk from the sources linked below. Spot an error? Tell us at corrections@wattsupnext.com.
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