In Grand Haven, the city runs your electricity (and melts the downtown snow)
Grand Haven has its own municipal electric utility, and its downtown snowmelt system helps keep streets and sidewalks clear in winter.
If you buy in the city of Grand Haven, your electric service comes from the city’s own utility. That’s the Grand Haven Board of Light & Power, usually called the BLP. It’s not a big company like Consumers Energy or DTE. The BLP has powered the city since 1896. For most of that time it made its own electricity at the coal-fired J.B. Sims plant on Harbor Island. But the city shut that plant down in 2020. The BLP now buys its power from the regional grid instead. (A plan to build a new gas-fired plant on the old Sims site was later dropped.) For you as a customer, the day-to-day difference is mostly who sends your bill and who you call about an outage. Still, it’s worth knowing your provider is the local utility, not a statewide one.
Like nearby Holland, Grand Haven also runs a downtown snowmelt system. Pipes run under the main downtown streets and sidewalks. They circulate warm water to keep those streets clear of snow and ice in winter. It’s a nice perk if you live or work right downtown. But your own home almost certainly won’t be on it.