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.
Michigan had over 759 MW of solar capacity in 2021. December 2020 marked a high point with over 105 MW brought online in that month alone. December 2021 saw 110 MW added. In 2016, solar provided only about 0.25% of all electricity. This rose to 0.58% in 2021.
Solar farms and arrays
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.
In July 2012, Michigan's largest rooftop array, 977.6 kW, was installed in Canton on the IKEA store. 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. In 2015, DTE built a 1.1 MW solar farm at Domino's Farms near Ann Arbor, slightly larger than the Ford carport. The IKEA store announced an expansion of its existing array in 2015 to bring it to 1.2 MW. A 1.95 MW solar farm at DTE's Greenwood Energy Center near St. Clair came online in January 2016. Indiana Michigan Power, in November 2016, opened a 4.6 MW solar farm near Watervliet. In May 2017, DTE brought online two solar farms in Lapeer County: a 28.4 MW farm and a 19.6 MW solar farm. 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. In July 2017, DTE completed a 2MW solar farm built in a closed city park in Detroit.
The 24 MW Delta solar farm opened in two phases in 2018, supplying power for the Lansing Board of Water and Light. 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.
A 1.3 MW solar farm was built by American Municipal Power at a brownfield site in Coldwater and came online in February 2018. Flushing Schools built a 0.96 MW system spread over the roofs of seven school buildings, completed in 2019.
In December 2020, the 20 MW Temperance Solar, 20 MW Bingham Solar, 15 MW Electric City Solar and the first 50 MW phase of Assembly Solar Farm were all brought online.
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.
Fort Custer began construction in May 2015 of a 0.25 MW solar farm with plans for a second 0.3 MW farm later. 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. 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.
Solar with battery storage
"Circuit West" is a thirteen-block microgrid test in Grand Rapids. It contains a 0.65MW array of 1,800 panels on the roofs of three buildings and a 500 kW-hr battery.
Community solar
In 2015, several community solar projects were proposed. Consumers Power built a 3 MW solar farm at Grand Valley State University, completed April 2016, which became the largest solar farm in Michigan. Consumers Power also built a 1 MW community solar project at Western Michigan University, completed in August 2016. Spartan Solar, a 1.2 MW installation in Cadillac, was built by Wolverine Power Cooperative in fall 2016, the largest solar plant in Northern Michigan. A 0.3 MW community solar farm in East Lansing opened in January 2019 for Lansing Board of Water and Light. Escanaba approved a 1MW partly community solar installation near Delta County Airport to be online in 2018