How the HEOP Gets Power and Water
One of the key reasons the Holt Economic Opportunity Park was designated as a Featured Site is its access to utilities, such as electricity, water and wastewater in the area.
Electric Power Service
Lansing Board of Water and Light, Consumers Energy, and ITC supply electricity to the broader Delhi Township area as part of the regional power grid. The specific project designed and selected for this site will ultimately determine how much power is needed and how it is connected to the grid.
The neighboring industrial park already has significant electric infrastructure, which makes it faster and easier to connect new development at the HEOP.
In addition to long-term resource planning, Michigan requires all utilities to demonstrate their ability and capacity to serve customers four years into the future, exceeding regional and federal requirements. Any development will be subject to review and approval to ensure it fits within that existing and demonstrated capacity to ensure customers’ power needs will be met long into the future, even during periods of extreme temperatures.
Water & Wastewater Services
The Lansing region, including the HEOP site, gets its water from the Saginaw aquifer, a vast underground source of groundwater beneath mid-Michigan.
When new developments are proposed in the region, water providers look ahead to understand how much water it will need and plan for future demand before development can move forward.
Lighthouse’s approach to design includes closed-loop cooling, which is truck filled one time and does not require a wastewater connection for cooling. Any project on the HEOP will be evaluated to ensure it can sustainably operate and protect the water service and quality of homes and businesses.
What This Means for Residents
Development on this site will not reduce utility service for current residents, and it's not expected to raise residential utility rates. Here's why:
Utility systems are already built to handle growth. Any new large customer must go through its own approval process before connecting. It doesn't take away from what already serves residents.
Michigan’s large load tariffs aim to ensure existing residents and customers are protected from the cost of interconnecting energy intensive facilities, such as data centers. According to the MPSC, this ensures large load customers “fully pay for the costs needed to serve them, and that there are adequate guardrails in place to avoid both cross-subsidization from other customers and the risk of stranded assets should the anticipated load fail to fully materialize.”
Utility rates are set through a regulated process that applies to everyone. One new customer can't change what residents pay on their own. Adding business customers can actually help spread costs out, rather than increasing residents’ rates.
Utility providers must keep service reliable for everyone. State and regional regulators regularly evaluate grid capacity to ensure new connections, customers and projects don’t impact reliability or service for residents.