Wild Rice Electric Co-Op Inc10125 West Watergate Road, Cadillac, Michigan, United States

Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative, Inc. is a not-for-profit, member-owned generation and transmission (G&T) electric cooperative headquartered in Cadillac, Michigan.  We supply wholesale electric power to our seven members, and are governed by a Board of Directors comprised of two directors from each member.

Wolverine’s members consist of five distribution electric cooperatives and two alternative electric suppliers participating in Michigan’s electric choice program. We have the capacity to supply our members with approximately 790 megawatts (MW) of power through diverse resources, including 565 MW of peaking and intermediate power from our six natural gas-fired power plants, 165 MW of base load power from our share of the Ohio Valley Electric Corporation (OVEC) and Campbell 3 coal-fired power plants, and 60 MW of renewable energy from Harvest Wind Farm and Thunder Bay Hydro.

And we’re not stopping there! Currently under construction is the Alpine Power Plant, a 432 MW natural gas-fired peaking power plant, scheduled to be operational by summer 2016. Wolverine is also purchasing 100 percent output from two new wind projects, Deerfield Wind and Michigan Wind 3, scheduled to be online by January 2017 and capable of producing up to 300 MW of power from wind.  When complete, these three new projects will increase Wolverine’s total power supply to 1,522 MW.

Where We Came From

As late as the mid-1930s, nine out of ten rural homes were without electric service. The farmer milked his cows by hand in the dim light of a kerosene lantern. His wife was a slave to the wood range and washboard.

The unavailability of electricity in rural areas kept their economies entirely and exclusively dependent on agriculture. Factories and businesses, of course, preferred to locate in cities where electric power was easily acquired. For many years, power companies ignored the rural areas of the nation.

On May 11, 1935, President Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Administration (REA) Act, which was passed in 1936 and provided federal assistance to accomplish rural electrification.  Once World War II ended, electricity rapidly spread across rural America, with 90 percent of farms having electricity by 1953.

Today, approximately 99 percent of the nation’s farms have electric service, thanks to the drive and determination of electric cooperatives.