Substations, the “unsung heroes” of the grid, continue to help West Michigan grow by providing safe and reliable energy.

Walker’s Hawthorne Substation joined our family last summer and is just one of the many reliability projects in Kent County that have made Michigan’s grid stronger. It has the capacity to power up to 32,000 homes with nearby businesses benefiting, including a local tool and die shop and an Amazon facility.

Meanwhile, over in Wyoming, upgrades are ongoing at the Beals Road Substation. Improvements to the substation, which powers about 50,000 customers, include installation of a new transformer, breaker and switch replacements.

Randy Thelen, Right Place President and CEO, said they are the “unsung heroes” in helping recruit and expand businesses in the region.

“The new substation allows for greater reliability in our service area, of course, but it also signals to the business community that there’s opportunities to grow, that we have the energy service to help them grow and facilitate the growth of the region,” Thelen said. “And, you know, we always say, if you’re not growing as a region, you’re stagnating or you’re dying, and we want to stay on that growth trajectory.”

We have about 1,300 substations around the state. They convert electricity into different voltages. The voltage is increased or decreased through transformers, which are key equipment within substations. Electricity is converted in a substation so that it can be distributed to neighborhoods.

“We’re improving our reliability in Kent County with not only the substation construction project that we have going on, but with sub metro undergrounding, our LVD Line and HVD Line construction,” said Rich Vos, manager of substation construction around the state. “We have a lot of groups coming together to make reliable service a reality in Kent County.”

Thelen said he appreciated the efforts by all those groups to bring safe, reliable power to West Michigan.

“To see this kind of investment by Consumers Energy today is incredibly important,” Thelen said at the unveiling of the Hawthorne Substation last summer. “You look around this neighborhood here, this industrial park, for all intents and purposes, didn’t exist ten years ago. And five years ago, it really found its groove. And today we have over a thousand people working within quarter, a half mile of where we stand. So, it’s infrastructure like this that enables that kind of growth.”

Substations Power Lives

Hawthorne is one of 121 substations in Kent County – the most per county in the state!  Those along with hundreds of others around Michigan are an instrumental part of our reliability plans, a blueprint with a long-term goal where no event (single outage or storm system) affects more than 100,000 customers and that no customer outage last more than 24 hours.

Consumers Energy inspects all substations a minimum of once every two months with some inspected every month.

Here are some of the other Kent County substations that are powering West Michigan and how we are improving them:

LaGrave Substation

  • Serves: 574 customers, including health care facilities, and numerous bars, restaurants and businesses on the east side of downtown.
  • Improvements: Improving a transformer bank and replacing and upgrading breakers.

Sinclair Substation

  • Serves: 1,711 customers, including high-profile medical and educational buildings along the Medical Mile on Michigan Street, as well as historic homes on Heritage Hill.
  • Improvements: Making enhancements to breakers.

Fairbanks Substation

  • Serves: 555 customers, including businesses in the Innovation Park located at Monroe and the Highway I-196 overpass.
  • Improvements: Transformer upgrades.

2025 Other Reliability Projects for Kent County

These critical investments will help improve reliability in Kent County for many years to come:

  • Investment improvements to high voltage distribution lines for about 250 pole or pole top replacements, switch replacements and nine miles of line improvements.
  • Planning 171 underground concrete vault and manhole inspections, with 23 complete through January and February.

These new reliability projects, and improvements to existing ones, adds up to our West Michigan families, friends and neighbors being able to count on us to provide them with reliable, safe energy.