ITC Michigan tells Senate committee statewide transmission build will expand capacity, cost billions

ITC Michigan executives told the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment on Oct. 12, 2025, that an expanding, higher-voltage transmission backbone will give Michigan greater access to the regional wholesale market, support new generation interconnections and increase system resiliency.

The presentation, led by Chuck Marshall, president of ITC Michigan, and Tony Masseso, Manager of State Government Affairs for ITC Holdings, described recent Midcontinent ISO (MISO) portfolio projects called Tranche 1 and Tranche 2.1 and the state-level work needed to site and build new high-voltage lines, including an interstate connection the company called the Helix–Hypo tie to Indiana.

Why it matters: The projects aim to increase import capability into Michigan and to enable faster generator interconnections, which ITC said can help expand competitive supply and could reduce wholesale prices for Michigan customers in some conditions. Committee members asked about timelines, landowner engagement, permitting, electromagnetic field setbacks and compensation for easements.

Marshall said ITCperforms only transmission work and keeps reliability metrics high: "Transmission is all we do," he said, adding that the companyregularly ranks in the 90th percentile for system reliability. "System resiliency is the ability to kind of weather the storm but it's more than that," Marshall said, describing restoration capacity after damage as part of resiliency.

Tony Masseso added: "We're the nation's largest independent transmission company," and said ITC is headquartered in Novi and operates in multiple Midwest states.

What ITC described

- Scope and scale: ITC said MISO's long-range transmission plan (LRTP) includes a multi-state backbone portfolio. Company slides cited a roughly $22 billion Midwest portfolio for Tranche 2.1 and said about $2.7 billion of that portfolio is sited in Michigan (noted by the presenter…