Solar power in Michigan has been growing in recent years due to new technological improvements, falling solar prices and a variety of regulatory actions and financial incentives. The largest solar farm in Michigan is Assembly Solar, completed in 2022, which has 347 MW of capacity. Small-scale solar provided 50% of Michigan solar electricity as recently as 2020 but multiple solar farms in the 100 MW to 200 MW range are proposed to be completed by the middle of the decade. Although among the lowest U.S. states for solar irradiance, Michigan mostly lies farther south than Germany where solar power is heavily deployed. Michigan is expected to use 120 TWh per year in 2030. To reach a 100% solar electrical grid would require 2.4% of Michigan's land area to host 108 GW of installed capacity.^[1]

This article uses bare URLs, which are uninformative and vulnerable to link rot. (September 2022)

Michigan had over 759 MW of solar capacity in 2021.^[2] December 2020 marked a high point with over 105 MW brought online in that month alone. December 2021 saw 110 MW added.^[3] In 2016, solar provided only about 0.25% of all electricity.^[4] This rose to 0.58% in 2021.^[2]

The 347MW Assembly Solar Project is the largest in the state. Located in Shiawassee County, it began construction in 2019 and was completed in March 2022.^[5][6][7]

In July 2012, Michigan's largest rooftop array, 977.6 kW, was installed in Canton on the IKEA store.^[8] Ford Motor Company and DTE Energy built the largest solar plant in the state, a 1.04 MW solar car port at Ford's world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan in 2015.^[9][10] In 2015, DTE built a 1.1 MW solar farm at Domino's Farms near Ann Arbor, slightly larger than the Ford carport.^[11] The IKEA store announced an expansion of its existing array in 2015 to bring it to 1.2 MW.^[12] A 1.95 MW solar farm at DTE's Greenwood Energy Center near St. Clair came online in January 2016.^[13] Indiana Michigan Power, in November 2016, opened a 4.6 MW solar farm near Watervliet.^[14][15] In May 2017, DTE brought online two solar farms in Lapeer County: a 28.4 MW farm and a 19.6 MW solar farm.^[16] These are the first large utility-scale solar farms in the state, with the larger covering 200 acres of land and the smaller one covering 100 acres.^[17] In July 2017, DTE completed a 2MW solar farm built in a closed city park in Detroit.^[18]

The 24 MW Delta solar farm opened in two phases in 2018, supplying power for the Lansing Board of Water and Light.^[19][20] Michigan State University built the largest solar car port project in North America, that covers 5000 parking spaces and has a total of 15 MW_(DC) of power, completed in December 2017.^[21][22]

A 1.3 MW solar farm was built by American Municipal Power at a brownfield site in Coldwater and came online in February 2018.^[23][24] Flushing Schools built a 0.96 MW system spread over the roofs of seven school buildings, completed in 2019.^[25][26]

In December 2020, the 20 MW Temperance Solar,^[27] 20 MW Bingham Solar, 15 MW Electric City Solar and the first 50 MW phase of Assembly Solar Farm were all brought online.^[3]

In January 2021, Pine Gate Renewables brought 16 MW of solar power online in the form of eight separate 2 MW solar farms in Genesee and Saginaw counties.^[28]

Fort Custer began construction in May 2015 of a 0.25 MW solar farm with plans for a second 0.3 MW farm later.^[29] This is part of the U.S. military's renewable energy goals of 25% renewables by 2025. In 2017, a project was announced for Fort Custer that would be a microgrid consisting of a 1.375 MW diesel system, 0.720 MW solar PV array, and a 0.400 MW energy storage system.^[30] Camp Grayling has a small 0.02 MW installation on one building roof while Selfridge Air National Guard Base had no solar power by 2014. Orion Renewable Energy Group, has proposed a 100 MW solar farm in SE Goodland Township in Lapeer County.^[31]

Distributed solar is not widely used in Michigan, with 14,446 installations. The total electric generation capacity of these installations was 124,749 kilowatts (kW) at the end of 2021. However, customer participation and installations are increasing quickly, with a 53% increase in capacity in 2019.^[58] On Jan 21, 2023 Consumers Power agreed to double the cap on its distributed rooftop solar and legacy net metering program from 2% to 4%. Additionally, the rate at which the company credits rooftop solar customers for the excess power fed onto the grid will be based on power supply rates that factor in transmission costs.^[59]

Despite having only reached 100 megawatts of installation statewide by 2018, thousands of megawatts have been proposed or included in planning documents. In response to DTE Energy filing a proposal for 2023 which included a 1.1GW natural gas plant with almost no new solar installations, renewable energy advocates proposed a plan with 1,100 megawatts of new solar capacity, 1,100 megawatts of wind, and 253 megawatts of demand response which they claimed would satisfy criteria at a lower cost.^[60] The state panel backed the DTE proposal in April 2018.

In 2017, Cypress Creek Renewables announced plans to build 2,600MW of solar plants in Michigan but has received no contracts from the 2 major power companies.^[61] Cypress Creek has filed complaints, in 2018, against DTE and Consumers Power for failing to comply with the PURPA law.^[62] In August 2019, Consumers Power proposed to allow 584 MW to connect to the grid by September 2023. This was almost four times the entire state total for solar power at the time of the proposal. They also propose accepting as much as 3000 MW to be connected to the grid at a lower purchase price per kilowatt hour over a longer timeframe. The proposal would need approval from the state electrical rate board.^[63] In September 2019, the Michigan Public Service Commission approved the settlement.^[64]

In June 2018, Consumers Power announced a plan detailing changes from now until 2040 that would see it close all coal plants, use only natural gas for 10% of current needs and have the majority of its power supplied by solar. This would require building 6,200MW of solar as well as using 450MW of battery storage.^[65] In 2020, Consumer Power expanded on this plan by announcing it would become carbon neutral.^[66]

In September 2019, DTE Energy announced it was seeking bids for 25 to 200 megawatts of electricity from solar projects to be online between 2021 and 2023.^[67]

Michigan was ranked 14th among U.S. states for solar jobs in 2013.^[68]

In 2002, Stanford R. Ovshinsky built a factory in Auburn Hills, Michigan to build low cost Uni-Solar panels using amorphous semiconductors that generate power in diffuse light.^[69] Uni-Solar became the second largest manufacturer of thin film solar cells, after First Solar, and a developer of solar shingles before going bankrupt in 2012.^[70][71]

Suniva opened a solar panel factory in Saginaw, Michigan in 2014, capable of producing 200MW of panels per year.^[72] Suniva closed its Michigan plant in March 2017 and later filed for bankruptcy.

The Government of Michigan has taken a variety of actions in order to encourage solar energy use within the state. On 28 Nov 2023 Gov. Whitmer signed bills to transition Michigan to clean energy by 2040. The new laws also give the state the authority to override local decisions to allow farmers and property owners to house wind & solar projects on their land. State’s control over wind & solar projects will allow energy companies to avoid the bitter local zoning battles that have doomed such projects in the past. (https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/whitmer-signs-energy-bills-make-michigan-use-clean-energy-2040)

On November 20, 2019, Governor Whitmer signed legislation exempting rooftop solar & alternative energy systems up to 150 kW from property tax assessment.^[73]

• Wind power in Michigan
• List of power stations in Michigan
• Solar power in the United States
• Renewable energy in the United States