Analysis of Michigan City Unit 12 Availability and Capital Spending
On behalf of Earthjustice and Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, Synapse evaluated the availability and outage of behavior of the Michigan City Unit 12 (Unit 12) coal plant and discussed the capital costs that would be required to extend the unit past its scheduled retirement date. The unit has a scheduled retirement year of 2028, and a recent IURC Staff Report recommends that Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO) re-evaluate this retirement date in its 2027 IRP.
We found that extending Unit 12 past its scheduled 2028 retirement would expose customers to notable costs for a fairly unreliable asset.
The unit performed worse on average than similarly sized coal plants between 2021 and 2025, operating at a lower capacity factor and availability and a higher forced outage rate. Unit 12 has operated at a capacity factor below 50 percent in every year since 2021 and experienced a forced outage in half the months we analyzed. Many of these outages occurred during winter storms, when demand on the system was highest.
Continued operation would also require NIPSCO to address environmental compliance and other maintenance expenses. The unit currently transports about 50,000 tons of coal ash annually to a landfill at the Schahfer coal plant. Coal ash disposal capacity at the Schahfer landfill is finite—only one of nine landfill phases is currently active, and it is unclear whether the site will continue accepting waste once the Schahfer units retire. In addition, we estimate sustaining capital expenditures at approximately $17.6 million per year by 2028, and this figure likely underestimates the true cost.