Friday, August 7, 2026
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
We Energies starts new renewable energy plants to serve data centers
Francesca Pica
Developers have broken ground on three major We Energies projects as power demand from artificial intelligence data centers grows.
We Energies announced Aug. 4 that construction began for three clean energy projects that combined can power around 100,000 homes. They include a $443 million solar and battery project in Rock County, $355 million wind farm in Iowa and Grant counties, and $106 million battery storage facility in Walworth County.
About half of each facility’s capacity will serve the $15 billion Port Washington data center project run by Vantage Data Centers, Oracle and OpenAI. Under the terms of We Energies’ new data center electric rate, the tech companies must cover an equivalent portion of construction costs.
Chicago-based developer Invenergy will build the power plants before selling them to three utility companies. We Energies will own a majority of each facility, with the rest split between Madison Gas and Electric and the Wisconsin Public Service Corporation.
All three projects were approved by the state Public Service Commission. They will create around 450 construction jobs, We Energies says.
The facilities come as statewide energy demand is expected to rise 40% by 2032. Large data centers like the Port Washington and Mount Pleasant campuses are responsible for most of the increase, according to estimates from state regulators.
In response, We Energies parent company WEC Energy Group is eyeing $20 billion in new energy investments over the next few years. We Energies has designated several other new solar, wind and natural gas projects as resources for data centers, some of which are still waiting approval.
“These renewable energy projects are part of our strategy to strengthen reliability through a balanced mix of Wisconsin-based energy sources, including renewables and state-of-the-art natural gas plants,” We Energies President Mike Hooper said in a statement Aug. 4.
The proposed natural gas-fired plants include a 1.1-gigawatt facility in Kenosha County and a 342-megawatt project in Walworth County, both built by Invenergy. They total $2.3 billion and are pending PSC approval.
Residents and environmental advocates voiced opposition to the plants at public hearings in July, saying they serve a few tech giants at the expense of public health.
We Energies says it has more than three gigawatts of solar and wind projects and 600 megawatts of battery storage in service, under construction or pending PSC approval.
Francesca Pica can be reached at fpica@usatodayco.com
Sunday, August 2, 2026
Saturday, August 1, 2026
Friday, July 24, 2026
Will residential customers be forced to pay for data center power lines?
Francesca Pica
As more Wisconsin utilities look to hold hyperscale data centers financially responsible for new power plants, regulators are still left to decide a key question: who's paying for the power lines?
On July 16, American Transmission Co. filed plans to shield residents from costs related to Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar data center campus on the former Foxconn site in Mount Pleasant. The power line company serves more than five million customers in eastern Wisconsin, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and parts of Minnesota and Illinois.
It’s the first in a string of plans to directly assign data center-related transmission costs to the tech companies that own them, according to ATC. These include Vantage Data Centers’ $15 billion project in Port Washington and a data center in Beaver Dam owned by Facebook parent Meta.
ATC is planning more than $2 billion in new high-voltage power lines, substations and facility upgrades to help serve large data centers – an unprecedented build-out for the company. ATC charges these costs to utilities like We Energies, who send them to their customers through energy bills.
We Energies will pay the total cost of transmission capacity a data center requests “even in the event the end-use data center customer fails to materialize or take 100% of the requested service,” according to the proposal. Microsoft must then pay the utility back in full.
“It’s a little bit like a builder. You say, ‘I want a four-bedroom house,’ and it's like, ‘well, I'm only going to use three of them for a while and I don’t want to pay for one quarter,’” said Ellen Nowak, ATC vice president of regulatory and government affairs.
“You asked us to build a four-bedroom house – you’re getting a four-bedroom house and you’re going to pay for the whole house.”
A Microsoft spokesperson told the Journal Sentinel the tech company “remains committed to paying the costs our data center operations require while protecting other ratepayers.”
Regulators previously approved separate electric rate for data centers
In April, the state Public Service Commission modified and approved a separate electric rate for data centers in We Energies’ service area, including the Mount Pleasant project. It’s intended to ensure data centers pay for billions of dollars in new infrastructure needed to serve them.
But unlike new power plants, transmission projects built by ATC are not covered by the data center rate. Commissioners warned that if these costs are not accounted for, they could end up on residents’ energy bills.
We Energies said in April it was working with ATC on a plan to address transmission costs.
Consumer advocates have warned about the cost of the transmission lines throughout the process. They include the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin, which represents residents in utility cases.
“Without the large and loud engagement on this topic, I doubt we would have seen the movement we have from the applicant and ATC to evaluate creative solutions to this issue,” Commissioner Marcus Hawkins said in April.
CUB executive director Tom Content said the group will review ATC’s proposal “with an eye toward shielding data center-linked costs from the power bills paid by the residential and small business customers we represent.”
“This proposal goes to the heart of a key issue for CUB, ensuring customers aren’t left holding the bag for billions of costs for new power lines ATC has asked to build to serve them,” Content said. “We had expressed concern in the data center tariff case about how transmission costs were to be allocated and the PSC responded by revamping the original We Energies proposal.”
More data center plans coming, power line company says
ATC says plans for the Port Washington and Beaver Dam data centers will be filed separately.
Meanwhile, the Public Service Commission is ordering retail utilities create a uniform electric rate for all their large data center customers. Commissioners say this will increase transparency and ensure fairness in future projects.
But ATC says agreements for individual projects are in line with its past filings as well as data center plans enacted by transmission owners in other states. The rules for wholesalers like ATC are different, the company added.
“That’s not atypical for us,” Nowak said. “Our agreements are going to be very similar among all of our customers. It's just going to be different inputs, and we have to treat all of our customers similarly and equally.”
In March, Meta, Oracle, Microsoft and other tech giants signed a White House agreement promising to cover all costs associated with their data center build-outs. The Trump administration expanded the nonbinding pledge in July as it seeks to promote AI development.
Meanwhile, data centers are facing growing public backlash. Marquette University Law School's July poll found that three quarters of Wisconsin voters viewed data centers unfavorably, up from 55% in October.
CUB will be watching for future agreements for the other data center campuses, Content said.
“It's critical to ensure data center developers are paying their full share for the costs needed to serve them, including ‘network upgrades’ that tech companies committed to funding when they signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge this spring at the White House,” he said.
Cost recovery rules add urgency
Retail utilities like We Energies cannot pass along the cost of a new power plant until it comes online, years after initial approval. But a regulatory exception allows ATC to charge customers for projects that are still under construction.
The new transmission projects for Microsoft’s campus have already been approved by state regulators, totaling $625 million. Two more substations initially built for Foxconn will serve the project and be covered by ATC’s July 16 plan.
A $1.5 billion high-voltage power line for the Port Washington data center is also pending commission approval.
The cost recovery rule means customer protections must be put in place soon, before new projects make their way into electric rates, consumer advocates warn.
We Energies earmarked $620 million in transmission charges for data centers in 2027 and 2028, according to its energy rate plan. State regulators will likely vote on approval of the plan by the end of 2026.
Both the state Public Service Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission must sign off on ATC's plan. It has been sent to the regional grid operator for review, the company says. It’s expected to come before federal regulators by early August.
Once it’s filed, the federal agency will have 60 days to respond.
Francesca Pica can be reached at fpica@usatodayco.com.
Thursday, July 23, 2026
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Saturday, April 4, 2026
We Energies delays Oak Creek coal plant closure again
Francesca Pica
We Energies will again delay the closure of its aging coal plant in Oak Creek.
The utility said in public filings to state regulators it's considering keeping two coal units at the Oak Creek Power Plant open into 2027. We Energies initially planned to shut down the plant in 2023 but delayed closure to 2025, then 2026, "to meet high energy demand periods."
The coal units first went online in the 1960s. They now run during periods of peak demand, typically the hottest and coldest days of the year, to help support the electric grid.
The utility says it wants to ensure grid reliability before shutting down the plant, referencing the extreme cold that hit southeast Wisconsin in January.
"Having available generation was incredibly important for reliability and also valuable for our customers," We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway said.
We Energies is also waiting for new natural gas plants in Oak Creek and Kenosha County to go into service. The plants will help supplement new wind and solar projects as demand for electricity is expected to increase.
"How much [the coal plant] may run, even now through then, remains to be seen," Conway said. "But keeping it available will be super important for a really hot stretch or cold polar vortex."
Environmental groups say decision hurts public health
Environmental groups like Clean Wisconsin said extending the plant's life adds to damage the environment and the health of nearby residents.
"It's turning its back on the communities who are dealing with the pollution that comes from that plant every single day," Amy Barrilleaux, Clean Wisconsin communication director, told the Journal Sentinel.
Plant closure deadlines are set by utilities and don't have an enforcement mechanism – rendering them "meaningless," Barrilleaux said.
"To sit here and say, now it's going to be the end of 2027, I don't know who's going to believe that," she said.
Barrilleaux said the move keeps Wisconsin ratepayers on the hook longer for coal power, which is more expensive than renewable sources like wind and solar.
Conway said that because the plant runs only during periods of peak demand, when energy is at its most expensive, the electricity it supplies to the grid helps reduce overall costs.
The move comes as the Trump administration has ordered retiring coal plants to remain open, including in Michigan and Indiana. The Oak Creek extension is unrelated, Conway said.
Because the Michigan and Indiana plants operate on the same regional grid, Wisconsin residents pay costs associated with them in addition to the Oak Creek facility, Barrilleaux said.
"[The Trump administration's] desperate attempt to prop up what is a dying fuel source is just going to cost us a lot of money," Barrilleaux said.
Francesca Pica can be reached at fpica@usatodayco.com.
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