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• Electrical line work pays a median salary of more than $95,000 and does not require a college degree. 
• The demand for electricity, driven by data centers, means line workers enjoy job security and union benefits in addition to their salaries. 
• However, the work can be dangerous, with line workers exposed to the elements, heights and thousands of volts of power. 
• Wisconsin Watch visited a pre-apprenticeship program at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau that trains 14 students annually to learn more about the work.

On a sunny morning in late August, a dozen teenagers wearing reflective vests and work boots stand on a hill overlooking the farm fields of their central Wisconsin college.

A few steps away is the classroom where they’ll learn how electricity works. Beside it, a handful of poles six stories tall mark the training yard where they’ll train to install and repair power lines, a skill that’s increasingly in need as Wisconsin’s infrastructure ages and data centers demand ever more energy. 

Today, they’ll try out some of the toughest physical parts of the job — while racing against the clock. 

The students have just 30 minutes to dig a hole 4 feet deep and 2 feet wide. Then they must walk two 100-pound wooden pole chunks down the school’s dirt road and haul a 70-pound piece of wood up a 65-foot pole twice, using only a pulley and their own strength. The student who finishes in the shortest time wins.

This is day three of the nine-month Electrical Power Distribution Program at Northcentral Technical College in Wausau, which prepares about 14 students each year for careers with electric utilities or power line construction companies. 

It’s one of seven such programs at the state’s tech colleges, which together enrolled 265 students in 2025. 

With a median salary of more than $95,000, electrical line work is one of the country’s most lucrative jobs for people without a college degree. It can also be dangerous and draining, as it often involves long days of manual labor, as well as exposure to the elements, heights and thousands of volts of power.

Most of the students in this class were still in high school just a few months ago. By the end of September, they’d begun scaling utility poles six stories tall. Within a year, they could land apprenticeships that pay more than $34 an hour and put them on track to earn union pensions.

It’s instructor Marc Cegielski’s job to make sure they’re ready.

“It is physically demanding. It is mentally demanding, and your work-life balance is probably not going to be very good — unless you want your work-life balance to be more work than not work,” said Cegielski, who spent four years doing line work before he started teaching. He still works as a lineman for several weeks each summer to keep his skill sharp. 

The field of electrical line work is thriving. The country is expected to add 13,600 line worker jobs between 2025 and 2035, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s a jump of 10%, much faster than the average for all jobs. In Wisconsin, the ranks are expected to swell nearly 14% from 2024 to 2034, with about 240 job openings projected each year. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 2150, which represents line workers and a variety of other workers in Wisconsin, reports its membership is at an all-time high. 

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One reason for that growth: the explosion of artificial intelligence. 

While the data centers that provide the computing power for all that AI tend to employ relatively few people once they’re up and running, constructing them takes a lot of labor. And it’s not just the work of building the data centers themselves. Hyperscale data centers, designed to be able to scale up their computing power as needed, will need massive amounts of electricity to power their computers, and Wisconsin will need to expand and update its electrical grid to meet the demand. Wisconsin’s first hyperscale data center opened in Mount Pleasant this summer, and others are under construction in Beaver Dam and Port Washington. Proposals for additional centers are under review in other communities, including Kenosha and Wisconsin Rapids.

The new energy demand comes at a time when states finally have the money to strengthen and expand aging electric grids, thanks to the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law in 2021. Those funds could help Wisconsin’s electrical infrastructure accommodate more energy sources and rebound more quickly after storms, changes proponents say are needed whether or not the state adds more data centers.

Meanwhile, line workers, like many other tradespeople, have been in increasingly short supply as Wisconsin’s workforce shrinks.  

“There’s never been a better time to get involved in this trade, and the work outlook right here at home in Wisconsin looks awesome for the next 10-plus years,” said IBEW Local 2150 business manager Jim Meyer. 

Risk versus reward

Installing and maintaining power lines is rewarding work, Cegielski said, because workers can see the difference they’re making. Sometimes they turn the lights back on after a storm. And sometimes, they bring electricity to a place that’s never had it, as he and a few students do each spring on the Navajo Reservation. 

“Getting people’s electricity back feels really good,” Cegielski said.

But the job isn’t for everyone. 

Line work involves heavy exertion in all kinds of weather. Machines can handle the tough tasks some of the time, but Cegielski warns his students there are plenty of times when they’ll need to dig or lift by hand because no machine is available, or it’d be too hard to maneuver the machinery — say, in a residential backyard. Plus, if there are buried utilities within 18 inches, mechanical digging is prohibited. 

“You can’t always use a machine. Sometimes you’re the machine,” Cegielski tells his students as they race to dig their holes. He says he’s sometimes spent a whole day digging a single hole, with or without a machine to help.

The students wipe their brows. One slips off his gloves. Cegielski urges them on. “Come on, man. The customer needs their electricity back.” 

With four minutes left on the clock, Sam Volm, 18, unfolds a ruler to check his progress. 

“I’m only about 2 feet deep! This is so crazy,” he says. He’s not alone. None of the holes are nearly deep enough. 

It’s just one example of the challenges of the job. Some line workers work for contractors hired by utility companies to build or maintain their infrastructure. Those workers could be on the road, often out of state, for weeks or months at a time. Line workers employed by local utility companies generally work close to home. Still, many work 12- to 16-hour shifts, and they may need to be available to help on nights or weekends.

“Your phone rings a lot,” Cegielski said. “You’re going to be missing a lot of things that you’d rather be doing with your friends and your family to answer that phone call and get people’s power back on so that they can cook supper, so that they can go to work and earn money for their own families.”

And then there are the safety concerns. Cegielski said he’s never been seriously injured doing line work, but he knows the risks that come from working with high voltage and at high heights, sometimes on busy roads. Electrical power line installers and repairers had the 16th highest fatal injury rate of all U.S. jobs, with an annual rate of around 24 fatalities and 189 nonfatal injuries per 100,000 workers, according to a USA Today analysis of federal data from 2020 and 2021.

Despite the challenges of the job, the training program at Northcentral Technical College consistently has a waitlist. 

For Volm, who’s worked in construction since he was 14, spending his days outside was part of the appeal. 

“You’re not behind a computer or nothing. It’s real physical work, it’s what I’m used to,” Volm said. 

His dad, an electrician, encouraged him to consider line work. Bigger lines mean bigger money, he said, plus he’d get to travel. 

The morning drill didn’t deter him. He’s been wrestling since first grade, so he’s got lots of practice putting his body to the test. 

“It was pretty tough, but I muscled through it, obviously, and embraced the suck.”

College classes not required

Training programs like these are an optional extra step for those looking to enter the field. Line workers get most of their training through apprenticeships that last three to six years and require only a high school diploma. But doing a program like the one at Northcentral Tech first gives students a chance to try out the work before they commit. 

That’s how Pat Keegan, a business agent with IBEW Local 2150, got started in the industry 25 years ago. 

“I’m glad I did it because I got comfortable with climbing and I knew I wanted to do this career,” Keegan said, though plenty of line workers go straight into apprenticeships. 

“I’ve seen people right out of high school, skip the tech school part of it … and have no issues,” Keegan said.

Prospective line workers shouldn’t assume this training will help them get an apprenticeship faster, Meyer said. Instead, they should think of it as a chance to solidify their skills and learn more about things like electrical theory. 

For Cegielski, the Northcentral Tech program is also about teaching the all-important “soft skills” that employers are increasingly looking for, like how to solve problems and persevere through challenges.

Take the August morning’s drill. What the students don’t know is that Cegielski designed the digging portion to be nearly impossible within the time limit.

“I like to observe to see, once they figure out they’re running out of time, do they continue trying, or do they give up? It’s a really good marker of character,” Cegielski said. “Even if they don’t think they can complete the task, they should keep going at it.”

Six other Wisconsin tech colleges offer electrical power distribution programs, but capacity is limited. Graduates earn around $43,000 more a year than the median high school graduate, according to an analysis of earnings data from three of the programs, conducted by Open Campus and The HEA Group. Program cost varies by school but typically runs from $8,500 to $11,000. 

Despite the growing demand for line workers, Northcentral Technical College hasn’t expanded its small program. Cegielski says he hasn’t heard anything about plans to do so. 

“They need more people than I can provide,” Cegielski said, “and I don’t see that changing anytime in the near future … I don’t know if that’s a problem that the technical college system wants to handle or can even handle.”

Leaders at Northcentral Technical College did not respond to a request for comment. 

Kristina Haensgen, a spokesperson for Moraine Park Technical College, which also trains future line workers, noted the “strong and ongoing demand for skilled electrical line workers” but said the school has no immediate plans to grow its program.

Chippewa Valley Technical College, Milwaukee Area Technical College and Southwest Wisconsin Technical College did not offer comment on their line worker training programs. 

If colleges do want to expand these programs, the booming industry might actually make it tougher, said Katy Pettersen, a spokesperson for the Wisconsin Technical Colleges System.

“We have not heard much on this front, other than colleges may be having trouble finding qualified instructors because the companies building the data centers are paying so well.”

Jobs aplenty

Meyer of IBEW Local 2150 said the number of apprenticeships available through his union depends on how much local employers are hiring. In a good year, there could be room for around 170 new apprentices, he said, and it looks like Wisconsin is on track for some good years. Those waiting for an apprenticeship can get jobs as “groundmen” assisting line-working crews until a spot opens. 

Cegielski talks with many of his former students, and he doesn’t think any of them are struggling to find work.

That stands in contrast to many other fields, where AI has left many uncertain about the future. Recent college graduates with four-year degrees are having more trouble finding jobs. Across the country, office workers are wondering if they’ll be replaced by increasingly powerful AI agents, or if they’ll have the skills they’ll need to use ever-more-ubiquitous AI tools. 

“At the moment, it doesn’t seem like AI is knocking at our door to take our jobs,” Cegielski said with a laugh. ”(The work) is hands-on, and it doesn’t look like machines and robots are going to be able to take it in the future. Maybe someday.”

Natalie Yahr reports on pathways to success statewide for Wisconsin Watch, working in partnership with Open Campus. Email her at nyahr@wisconsinwatch.org.

As data centers test Wisconsin’s electrical grid, job opportunities flourish 60 feet in the air is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Wisconsin’s largest utilities are on track to contribute less to political campaigns than in the last two gubernatorial election years, despite the enormous stakes for the state’s energy future.
• Neither Republican Tom Tiffany nor Democrat David Crowley received contributions from utility political action committees through September. 
• Utilities have directed nearly all their campaign contributions toward state legislative races. 
• Democrats are gaining ground in utility fundraising, receiving about 45% of contributions to legislative candidates and fundraising committees this year, compared with less than 20% in 2022.

Wisconsin’s multibillion-dollar energy infrastructure construction boom isn’t fueling a similar deluge of utility-related campaign spending ahead of the election.

The state’s largest utilities are collectively on track to spend less supporting political candidates this year than in the last two gubernatorial election years.

Utility campaign contributions to Wisconsin’s local, state and federal campaigns — and state-level partisan fundraising groups — reached just under $300,000 by late September, down roughly $50,000 from the same point in 2022.

Neither Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tiffany nor Democratic candidate David Crowley took in any contributions from the utilities’ political action committees (PACs) between January and September. 

Utilities could still make last-minute contributions before the election, as they have in years past.

Utilities are dialing back contributions despite the influence the next governor and Legislature will wield over the industry. Next month’s winners will appoint and confirm a new majority to the state commission that regulates utilities and weigh in on legislation that could shape Wisconsin’s energy future for decades.

Some industry observers speculate that the mismatch between utilities’ political spending and the election’s ramifications reflect the mounting public hostility to the data center boom — and, by extension, to the utilities themselves. 

“I think utilities are beginning to recognize that their brand is increasingly toxic,” said Jonathan Kim, a Chicago-based researcher for the Energy and Policy Institute, a nonprofit watchdog. As of August, Kim is also the institute’s registered lobbyist in Madison, focusing on residential ratepayer concerns. 

If past ties to utilities put a target on a candidate’s back, Kim added, the companies would have good reason to avoid making direct contributions in hotly contested races. 

Wisconsin isn’t the only state where utility political spending appears to be softening. In Michigan, for example, the state’s largest investor-owned utilities are on track to spend less supporting political candidates this year than they did in the last three midterm cycles. 

The drop in political spending falls short of an all-out retreat in Wisconsin. Utilities have steered nearly all of their contributions toward state legislative contests — and, for the first time in at least a decade, divided their giving almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans. The shift coincides with Democrats’ improved prospects of securing a majority in at least one legislative chamber for the first time since 2010.

How utilities spend on politics

Three companies provide electricity for a majority of Wisconsin households: Alliant Energy, owner of Wisconsin Power and Light; WEC Energy Group, the parent company of We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service Corporation; and Xcel Energy, owner of Northern States Power Company. 

Each company operates separate federal and state political action committees, or PACs. The committees collect voluntary contributions from company executives, employees and shareholders, then distribute those funds to political candidates and organizations chosen by their boards of directors. Candidates can spend donations on their current or future campaigns — or share them with other candidates. They cannot legally spend on personal expenses. 

Can utilities use ratepayer dollars for campaign contributions? (Click to expand)

Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission doesn’t explicitly prohibit it, but utility spokespeople told Wisconsin Watch that their companies do not bill ratepayers for political contributions. We Energies said the same to the state’s Public Service Commission in April.

Voters in Michigan will decide in November whether to prohibit utilities from contributing to state political campaigns entirely.

 Wisconsin law caps how much a PAC can contribute to a given state-level candidate in a single cycle — up to $2,000 for a Senate campaign, for instance, or $86,000 for a gubernatorial campaign. Federal rules similarly limit PAC contributions to individual candidates. Utilities’ federal PACs can give up to $5,000 to a federal candidate.

Utility employees and executives, meanwhile, can donate via employer-sponsored “conduits.” Alliant, WEC Energy and Xcel each sponsor conduits, as do Madison Gas and Electric and the American Transmission Company, Wisconsin’s largest transmission utility. 

Like PACs, conduits serve as pass-throughs for political donations. Unlike PACs, employees choose which candidates receive their donations. The conduit’s sponsor may recommend candidates or races to support, and candidates who receive conduit contributions often also receive PAC donations. 

Conduit contributions appear in campaign finance records under the individual donor’s name. Although state law limits how much individuals may contribute to a candidate, the combined donations routed through a utility’s conduit can exceed the amount a utility’s PAC may give in a single cycle. 

How much have utilities spent on congressional races?

Alliant, WEC Energy and Xcel’s federal PACs gave roughly $23,500 to Wisconsin’s congressional delegation between January and late July.

U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil, facing a competitive race for a district stretching from Janesville to Racine, received $5,000 from Alliant’s PAC in early March — the largest Wisconsin utility contribution to a single candidate this year. Federal campaign finance records show no utility PAC contribution to Steil’s Democratic opponent, Mitchell Berman. 

The state’s utilities have largely steered clear of the high-profile race in Wisconsin’s 3rd District, where incumbent Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden and Democratic challenger Rebecca Cooke have tried to link each other to data center interests.

Utility PACs have donated to all eight Wisconsinites in the U.S. House in the last decade. But annual donations have plunged from 2016, when the three utilities’ PACs gave over $94,000 to the Wisconsin delegation, primarily to Paul Ryan, who was House speaker at the time.

U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, the Madison area’s representative in Washington since 2013, hasn’t  received a utility contribution since 2018. 

How much have utilities spent on state races? 

Contributions from the state-level utility PACs and their conduits to Wisconsin legislative candidates and legislative fundraising committees totaled roughly $250,000 between January and September.

Much of the decline in utility contributions from 2022 stems from reduced spending by WEC Energy’s PAC and conduit. 

Democratic lawmakers have received about 45% of utilities’ year-to-date contributions, compared to just under 20% in 2022.

“We work with both sides,” WEC Energy President Scott Lauber told investors on a July quarterly earnings call. “It’s just a matter of how we make Wisconsin successful.”

Taylor Adams, an Alliant Energy spokesperson, said the utility’s political giving is bipartisan and varies from year to year based on the communities and elected officials within its service territory, not partisan preference. Adams added that his company focuses on policies that support “reliable and cost-effective energy.”

Rep. David Steffen, chair of the Assembly Committee on Energy and Utilities, is the top individual recipient of utility dollars, campaign finance records show. He has received roughly $13,655 via utility PACs and conduits this year, accounting for roughly a third of his total 2026 fundraising as of September.

Alliant and WEC Energy’s PACs have already given Steffen’s campaign the maximum $1,000 allowed by state statute for an Assembly candidate in a single cycle. Three WEC executives have done the same through their company’s conduit. 

The Assembly committee’s ranking Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Lisa Subeck, D-Madison, received $3,980.

Sen. Melissa Ratcliff of Cottage Grove, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Utilities, Technology and Tourism, received $5,250, including $2,000 from Alliant alone — the maximum state law allows for a Senate candidate. Ratcliff is not up for reelection until 2028.

Assembly Majority Leader Tyler August, R-Walworth, has received $7,500 from utilities and their conduits while Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, took in $5,560. With longtime Assembly Speaker Robin Vos set to retire, August is likely among top contenders to become speaker if Republicans keep the majority after Election Day. 

August led Assembly’s Republicans through the two consecutive fights over utility-backed “right of first refusal” (ROFR) bills, which would grant Wisconsin’s transmission utilities first dibs on any electrical grid projects within their territory. Ratepayer advocates argue the proposal would risk driving up electricity prices by stifling competition in the transmission market. 

Speaking at a June WisPolitics luncheon, Hesselbein blamed Republicans for the bill’s failure last session, casting the policy as a means to shore up Wisconsin-based businesses and union jobs.

Chamber leadership and members of the Senate and Assembly utilities committees received over a quarter of all utility PAC and conduit contributions this year. 

That pattern isn’t unusual. Other industry interest groups, including in agriculture, also focus contributions on the committees most relevant to their businesses. 

“Election spending from industry and wealthy special interests is about wanting access and sway over policy agendas that could affect their bottom line,” said Nick Ramos, executive director of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. “It’s no surprise that they assess the landscape and find who might have the most impact.”

Some top recipients are less obvious. 

Rep. Tip McGuire, D-Kenosha, has received $4,750 this year — more than many lawmakers on the Assembly utilities committee, despite not serving on it. McGuire is one of four Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee, which drafts the state’s two-year budget.

Other key lawmakers received relatively little this year. Senate utilities committee chair Sen. Julian Bradley, R-New Berlin, received $1,500 from utility PACs and conduits as of late September, and Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer received $1,175. 

Not all utility money reaches lawmakers directly. Utility PACs also contribute to partisan fundraising groups like the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee, which contributes to legislative campaigns. 

Partisan committees also receive contributions directly from the utilities, rather than from their PACs. WEC Energy, for instance, gave $14,000 to partisan fundraising groups between January and June. 

State law doesn’t cap contributions to party fundraising committees. 

“There’s not supposed to be any sort of coordination between donors to the party committee and the campaigns that receive that money,” Kim said, making it difficult to know which candidates ultimately benefit from the utility’s committee contribution.

Scant spending on the governor’s race

About 2% of contributions from utility PACs and utility conduits between January and September flowed directly to gubernatorial candidates — including to candidates who lost their primary. 

Wisconsin hasn’t held an open gubernatorial election since 2010, muddying comparisons with other recent elections. 

Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker collected roughly $269,000 in contributions — not adjusted for inflation — between the launch of his gubernatorial campaign in 2009 and his exit in 2019, including about $86,000 ahead of his 2018 defeat by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. 

Evers received about $11,000 in utility contributions during that race. Utilities have since contributed roughly $330,000 to his campaign committee.

Ahead of the 2022 election, utilities contributed more than twice as much to Evers as they did Tim Michels, his Republican opponent.

Some gubernatorial spending in 2018 and 2022 came in late October, just after the candidates turned in their final pre-election fundraising reports. 

Utilities haven’t transferred that financial support to Crowley, whom Evers backed during the chaotic final leg of this year’s Democratic primary. Utility PACs have yet to contribute to his or Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaigns.

Tiffany has received roughly $3,600 via WEC and MGE’s conduits while Crowley has drawn none during the campaign. 

Still, both accepted utility contributions during previous runs for office.

Tiffany brought in at least $17,000 from utility PACs and through their conduits over a decade of state legislative campaigns, followed by another $11,500 during and after his U.S. House campaign in 2020.

Crowley’s state Assembly campaign committee raised just over $1,600 from utility PACs and conduits — mostly WEC, which serves households in the Milwaukee district he represented. His Milwaukee County executive campaign committee accepted another $9,900 from WEC’s PAC and via its conduit between 2020 and 2024.

Any additional contributions between Oct. 26 and Election Day will appear on the candidates’ next finance report in January.

Crowley and Tiffany’s visions for the PSC (click to expand)

Both Crowley and Tiffany are picking up the banner of energy affordability, promising to follow through in part via their appointments to the PSC.

“Under David Crowley, the PSC will become a watchdog for taxpayers, ensuring that Wisconsinites’ utility bills stay as low as possible while creating greater transparency in where their tax dollars are going,” Crowley spokesman Philip Schulman wrote in an email. “This includes empowering the PSC to reject rate hikes in favor of cheaper options and publishing a quarterly score card detailing everything from avoided outages to fuel cost savings.”

Tiffany doesn’t shy away from criticizing the current commission, in no small part because of his objections to converting cropland into solar farms. “Day one when I become governor, they will be replaced,” he said at a September town hall in Sauk County, referring to the two acting commissioners — Kristy Nieto and Marcus Hawkins — serving without Senate confirmation.

Utility allies spend more

Utilities share interests with other groups, some of which have poured far more into this year’s governor’s race.

Crowley has received separate $86,000 donations — the PAC cap for a single cycle — from at least four labor groups that often align with utilities on energy infrastructure projects:  International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers PAC, International Union of Operating Engineers Local 139 PAC, Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council and Wisconsin Pipe Trades Association PAC. Two other construction trades unions contributed smaller sums to Crowley’s campaign; a PAC representing a carpenters’ union gave $82,500 and a PAC representing plumbers and steamfitters gave $25,000.

Those unions represent workers who build or operate power plants and transmission lines. The political director of the Wisconsin Laborers’ District Council sits on the board of Fair Rates for Wisconsin’s Dairyland alongside WEC and Alliant representatives.

Tiffany seized on that support in an attack ad that dubbed his opponent “Data Center David Crowley,” citing the labor groups’ vocal support for developing data centers and associated energy infrastructure.

“IBEW certainly supports responsible data center development,” the IBEW state conference vice chair, John Jacobs, wrote in an email. “We also support renewable energy and countless projects that support family supporting jobs, great healthcare, great retirement benefits and a path to the middle class. All priorities of David Crowley – and that’s why we support him.”

Those labor groups had not contributed to Tiffany’s campaign through September. But Robert Marchant, the Wisconsin Data Center Coalition’s sole lobbyist, donated $5,000 in early June. Alliant, WEC and Xcel are founding members of the coalition. 

Spending strategically

Utilities’ spending this year leaves them far behind Wisconsin’s top political donors. Diane Hendricks, for example, has already given exponentially more than utilities in 2026 — all to the Wisconsin Republican Party, which has transferred most to Tiffany’s gubernatorial campaign.

But the companies’ political goals don’t match those of explicitly partisan spenders like Hendricks.

“They just want to be able to wield sufficient political power to get the things that they need,” Kim said. “They’re not going to spend dumb money.”

Despite high stakes for energy future, Wisconsin’s utilities scale back campaign spending — so far is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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• Wisconsin’s statewide economic development agency has signed at least five nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) with data center developers.
• Wisconsin Watch previously reported that five communities had signed local NDAs with data center developers. The statewide disclosure increases to eight the number of Wisconsin projects that used an NDA.
• NDAs have drawn criticism for keeping the public in the dark about the multibillion-dollar projects while government officials negotiate the terms of a project. Economic development officials say NDAs are necessary to attract businesses to Wisconsin.

Wisconsin’s statewide economic development agency has signed at least five nondisclosure agreements with developers of artificial intelligence data centers, adding a previously unknown level of secrecy to the billion-dollar projects.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., a quasi-government state agency, signed one of the NDAs nearly two years before a proposed data center in Menomonie was announced to the public and six months before the city signed its own NDA. 

Wisconsin Watch previously revealed that at least five communities signed local NDAs, keeping the public in the dark about data center proposals for months. 

The newly released state agency NDAs show that in some cases, the proposals were hidden from view even longer. Also, three of the NDAs signed by the state agency are for projects proposed in communities that didn’t have a local secrecy pact.

The agreements, provided to Wisconsin Watch under the state public records law, show the gap in time between when the WEDC NDAs were signed and when the data center proposals were publicly announced:

• Menomonie — 23 months: The August 2023 NDA, signed with a shell company called Balloonist LLC, was done 23 months before the city announced the data center proposal, which is pending. 
• Beaver Dam — 19 months: The NDA for the Meta data center now under construction in Beaver Dam, also signed in August 2023 by Balloonist, was done 19 months before the project was announced to the public. 
• DeForest — 8 months: The NDA was signed in February 2025 with QTS Data Centers, eight months before the public announcement of the proposal, which was later dropped.
• Mount Pleasant — 2 months: Microsoft’s NDA was signed in January 2023, two months before the village announced the proposed data center complex that is now under construction. 
• Port Washington: The July 2025 NDAs signed for the OpenAI/Oracle/Vantage project under construction were done six months after the city announced the proposal. 

WEDC replied to an interview request with a statement saying “the agency is committed to transparency and compliance with Wisconsin’s public records laws and has long been recognized for its strong commitment to reporting.”

“Wisconsin law recognizes that certain information related to pending economic development projects may need to remain confidential to protect their competitive nature,” the agency said. “NDAs are one tool used to facilitate the exchange of business information while companies evaluate potential investments, expansions, or relocations in Wisconsin. These agreements help Wisconsin compete for economic opportunities while remaining consistent with applicable public records laws.”

Told about WEDC’s use of NDAs, state Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, said he would add the state agency to legislation banning data center NDAs that he plans to introduce in January, after a new governor and Legislature take office. 

His original bill, introduced in January but given no hearings, would have applied only to local governments. 

“I would assume they wouldn’t like it,” Moses said of the WEDC. “I know certain groups … kind of frown on any time you start banning NDAs. But these data centers are such a big issue, and there’s so much unknown about them still, that we need to be doing something.

“I think regardless who the governor is and who has control of the Legislature, I think it’s popular,” Moses added. “I think it will get support, regardless.”

Behind the WEDC and confidentiality

WEDC is the state’s lead economic development agency. It aims to attract new businesses to the state by allocating tax credits, awarding grants and loans and authorizing local governments to issue bonds. 

The state law that created WEDC in 2011 says agency records are open to the public — except for “pending grants, loans, or economic development projects that, in the opinion of the corporation, must remain confidential to protect the competitive nature of the grant, loan, or project.”

That means proposed data centers costing billions of dollars and covering hundreds of acres could be quietly explored long before local residents are informed. 

“It just seems like really bad practice,” said Port Washington Ald. Michael Beaster, who opposed his community’s data center and made public records requests about it before being elected in April. “A state agency is not accountable to the local government.”

The NDA record requests

Wisconsin Watch sought to obtain all NDAs signed by WEDC for hyperscale data center proposals. However, the agency was unable to produce all NDAs in its records in response to a general public records request for them.

The agency initially provided NDAs for three data centers that it certified for a state sales tax exemption and are under construction — Microsoft’s in Mount Pleasant, Meta’s in Beaver Dam and OpenAI/Oracle/Vantage’s in Port Washington.

Mount Pleasant and Port Washington replied to previous public records requests from Wisconsin Watch saying they did not sign NDAs for their data centers. The Beaver Dam Area Development Corp., a quasi-government group, signed an NDA for the Beaver Dam data center.

Wisconsin Watch then followed up with a request for any NDAs that WEDC signed with at least 16 companies that Wisconsin Watch identified as making data center proposals in the state. That prompted WEDC to provide its Menomonie and DeForest NDAs. 

No data center NDAs were turned up by public records requests Wisconsin Watch made to the state’s nine regional economic development agencies. 

Six of the regional agencies said the public records law doesn’t apply to them. But three of those six, plus three others, said they had no such NDAs.

NDAs helped usher in massive economic development

The NDAs helped pave the way for multibillion-dollar developments, but also public backlash.

Microsoft’s plans have grown to $20 billion worth of data centers in Mount Pleasant, south of Milwaukee in Racine County. The OpenAI/Oracle/Vantage project is worth $15 billion in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee in Ozaukee County. Meta’s data center investment is $1 billion in Beaver Dam, 40 miles north of Madison in Dodge County. 

Data centers have also been worth billions of dollars to Wisconsin businesses that serve them. Earlier this year, just three Wisconsin companies had already done more than $1 billion in data center business, Wisconsin Watch reported.

“Non-disclosure agreements are an essential part of doing business in a competitive economic development climate,” the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce said in a statement to Wisconsin Watch. “Companies considering major investments don’t evaluate locations singularly. They compare us with communities across the country, and they expect legitimate trade secrets and proprietary business information to remain confidential while making those decisions. If we make it harder to protect that information, we put ourselves at a competitive disadvantage and risk losing that investment altogether. That means a loss of jobs, tax base and economic momentum. To our knowledge, not a single state prohibits its economic development arm from utilizing NDAs.”

Another measure of data centers’ impact is the sales tax exemption, part of the 2023-25 state budget. It means that generally, data centers certified by the WEDC, including the three facilities under construction, don’t have to pay sales taxes on construction materials, computer servers and other equipment. The exemption is estimated to be worth more than $2 billion and has been targeted by Democrats and Republicans for modification or elimination.

The $1.6 billion data center proposal in Menomonie in western Wisconsin, where $25 million in land has already been purchased, was paused in September 2025 after local opposition mounted. The city is still drafting zoning regulations. The city signed an NDA in February 2024, six months after the WEDC secrecy agreement.

QTS had planned to spend $12 billion on a data center in the Madison suburb of DeForest. The village, which said it did not sign an NDA, reached a wide-ranging community benefits agreement with QTS, but village officials dropped the plan over local opposition. Wisconsin Watch obtained records showing village officials were in talks with QTS around the same time WEDC signed a nondisclosure agreement and months before village officials initially told the public they were aware of the project.

At least two Wisconsin communities have restricted data center NDAs. The Columbia County Board prohibited its members from signing data center NDAs. The Beloit Town Board barred town board employees from signing them without board approval.

Both candidates for governor in the Nov. 3 election, Democrat David Crowley and Republican Tom Tiffany, have expressed support for banning data center NDAs.

More data centers being considered

Data center proposals that are pending include one for a former paper mill in Wisconsin Rapids, north of Madison, where a decisive city council vote could come this month. The city said it did not sign an NDA. 

In Kenosha, which signed an NDA in May 2024, residents are seeking a data center moratorium as the city considers a data center plan from Microsoft. The technology giant terminated the local NDA in June 2026.

That stemmed from Microsoft’s announcement three months earlier that it would no longer sign data center NDAs with local governments and would seek to terminate the ones it had signed, calling it an effort to build trust. 

The announcement didn’t mention state-level NDAs. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on state NDAs.

“We continue to hear these data centers and tech companies talking about wanting to be a good neighbor,” said Beaver Dam data center opponent Maily Kocinski. “This is not something a good neighbor does.”

Disclosure: The OpenAI Foundation recently awarded a grant to Wisconsin Watch but has no control over its editorial decisions. We will update our funding page to reflect the grant. A list of donors and funders through 2025, as well as our donation acceptance policies, can be found here.

Use of NDAs for Wisconsin data centers wider than previously known is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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In a governor’s race that has focused more on data center construction than artificial intelligence technology, Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Crowley on Tuesday announced a plan for state regulations on AI aimed at protecting vulnerable Wisconsinites. 

In an 11-point plan shared with Wisconsin Watch, Crowley calls for guardrails on AI offerings for minors and holding technology companies responsible for scams and fraud on their platforms. Some key components of the plan include: 

• Limiting access to AI chatbot apps for children under 13. 
• Prohibiting addictive design features, such as infinite scrolling and autoplay, on accounts of minors.
• Increasing penalties for circulating AI-generated sexual images of minors. 
• Allowing families to sue AI platforms if their content harms children, such as by promoting suicide or eating disorders. 
• Penalizing technology companies that profit from scams or fraudulent ads. 
• More funding for adult protective services and resource centers that can help victims of scams or fraud.

Crowley, the Milwaukee county executive, is running for governor against Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany in what polling from Marquette University Law School shows could be another close governor’s race in Wisconsin. AI policy debates between the two candidates in the months since the August primary have mostly been focused on the planning and construction of AI data centers, rather than the technology itself. 

In a statement, Tiffany also said Wisconsin needs “commonsense guardrails” to protect children and older adults, including holding companies accountable for platforms that allow creation of sexually explicit images or engage minors in inappropriate chatbot conversations. Tiffany said he also wants to prevent personal data from “falling into the hands of foreign adversaries, including Communist China.”  

“As governor, I will also support commonsense age-verification requirements for app providers, strengthen parental-consent protections, and give parents greater control over their children’s online activity,” Tiffany said. 

Crowley’s proposed state-level AI regulations land as President Donald Trump has dismissed calls for guardrails and warnings from technology company leaders asking for government oversight as their platforms become more advanced. 

Trump in May 2025 signed the Take it Down Act, which criminalized the online publication of real and AI-generated intimate images and requires social media platforms to remove them once notified of their existence. Tiffany, and the rest of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation, voted for the bill in 2025. 

Other proposed federal legislation has not advanced, including bills requiring public reporting of safety incidents by AI companies and requiring labels on any AI-generated content. Crowley in a statement said he would not “wait around for DC to act” on additional AI regulations if he is elected. 

“Like so many parents, Ericka and I are raising our three girls in the age of social media and AI, and we’re navigating things no generation before us has ever had to, worrying about whether a stranger is messaging our kids, or a fake picture of our daughter is going around school, or even scammers trying to drain a grandparent’s life savings,” Crowley said. 

The proposals in Crowley’s regulatory plan would require state legislative action. They echo recent bipartisan efforts signed into law by Gov. Tony Evers, including a series of bills that classified sextortion as a crime and provided additional recourse for victims and their families. 

Additionally, Attorney General Josh Kaul in August announced Wisconsin could receive up to $313 million in a settlement social media company Meta made with 47 states in a case that alleged addictive components of its platforms threatened teens’ mental health.

As data centers remain potent political issue, David Crowley offers plan to regulate artificial intelligence in Wisconsin is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Editor’s note: This story was updated Oct. 5, 2026 to add comment from the Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board.

Oracle is looking to Wisconsin’s only operating nuclear plant to power its Ozaukee County data center.

We Energies announced an agreement with the cloud computing giant on Friday that would allow Oracle to “subscribe” to between 10% and 20% of the Point Beach Nuclear Plant’s electricity generation. That electricity would help meet the energy needs of Project Lighthouse, the data center campus in Port Washington that Oracle is co-developing with artificial intelligence firm OpenAI. 

The agreement still requires approval by Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission. If it is approved, We Energies spokesman Brendan Conway said it could spare the utility’s other customers roughly $300 million in fuel costs over the next five years.

The 60-year-old Point Beach plant in Manitowoc County is the state’s largest generator, but the electricity it produces is more expensive than alternatives. We Energies spends about twice as much on fuel as its sibling utility, Wisconsin Public Service Company (PSC). The cost of nuclear fuel for Point Beach accounts for much of the difference. 

We Energies owned the facility until 2007, when it sold Point Beach to independent energy infrastructure giant NextEra Energy but continued purchasing most of the plant’s electricity output. The utility’s current purchase agreement expires in 2033, but We Energies recently signed on to continue buying roughly 86% of the plant’s electricity for another 20-year term. 

“The announcement by Oracle is certainly a step forward, as we have been seeking relief on this for years,” Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board Executive Director Tom Content said. “Whether that is a baby step or a leap forward for affordability remains to be seen.”

Meanwhile, We Energies filed a separate application with the PSC on Friday seeking approval  to build a new natural gas power plant on the site of the Fox Energy Center in Outagamie County. The proposed plant would more than double the site’s electricity output.

Disclosure: The OpenAI Foundation recently awarded a grant to Wisconsin Watch but has no control over its editorial decisions. We will update our funding page to reflect the grant. A list of donors and funders through 2025, as well as our donation acceptance policies, can be found here.

We Energies strikes deal to power Oracle data center with nuclear energy is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Data centers may provide a major economic development opportunity for local communities in Wisconsin, but concerns around water and energy use and potential costs to residents have made them increasingly controversial.

A new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum aims to put those issues — and Wisconsin’s data center debate — into context. Researchers examined tax incentives supporting those projects as well as their energy and water use.

Three major data center projects are in varying stages of development in Mount Pleasant, Port Washington and Beaver Dam. Others have been proposed but canceled in DeForest, Greenleaf and Janesville as polling has shown the issue to be unpopular with the public.

Communities have ‘significant protections’ under data center incentive deals

State law allows qualified developers to avoid paying sales and use tax on most purchases supporting the construction and operation of a data center.

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimates Wisconsin will lose out on $1.5 billion in sales tax revenues related to data center construction between 2024 and 2028, as well as forgo $369 million annually in sales tax revenue related to data center operations.

Wisconsin is one of 38 states that offer tax incentives to data centers. Jason Stein, one of the report’s authors, said without its sales tax exemption, Wisconsin might not have attracted the prominent developments.

“I think it’s reasonable to think that a lot of this investment — maybe most of this investment — would not have occurred without the incentive,” he said.

The report says the state could “recoup a significant portion of the forgone sales tax revenues” if the sales tax exemption helped attract a significant share of data center investment to Wisconsin.

That’s through income and sales taxes paid by construction workers and corporate income taxes paid by construction companies, as well as additional taxes paid by utilities serving data centers. 

Data centers are also expected to generate increased property tax revenues in the communities hosting them. 

Researchers reviewed local development agreements in Mount Pleasant, Port Washington and Beaver Dam, as well as proposed deals in communities where developments fell through. They found that, in general, local communities were striking “reasonable deals” that included financial safeguards.

Those safeguards often included limits on municipal borrowing, guaranteed property values and incentives tied to project performance, the report said.

“If the developer and the community follow through on their agreement and it moves forward as laid out, then those agreements offer substantial protections for the communities,” Stein said. “There are significant protections in each of these deals.”

Data centers use water, but Wisconsin water use has declined

While much of the public debate around data centers in Wisconsin has centered around water use, policy forum researchers found the bigger challenge is meeting the large electricity demands of those projects while protecting existing ratepayers.

That’s because water use in Wisconsin has declined over the past generation as some heavy industry left the state, industrial and residential users became more efficient and electric utilities shifted some energy generation from “water-intensive” coal plants to natural gas and renewable energy, the report said.

From 2011 to 2024, water withdrawals in the state fell by more than 500 billion gallons, or almost 24%, according to the report. 

The three main data center projects in Wisconsin are projected to use less water than the decline in water withdrawals over that period, the report states.

“We were on this track to use less and less water because of changes in our society, and maybe this will slow that down somewhat,” Stein said. “But that is a different thing than saying, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re using more water than ever before.’”

For example, Racine Water Works, the utility providing water for Microsoft’s data center campus in Mount Pleasant, saw its annual water sales decline by 2.3 billion gallons from 2000 to 2025, according to the report.

That’s “more than 250 times” as much water as the 8.4 million gallons annually Microsoft’s data center will use when fully operational, the report states. 

Electricity demand expected to rise significantly

While long-term declines in water use are expected to help offset demand from data centers, Wisconsin’s electricity demand is expected to grow, in large part driven by demand from data centers.

Peak demand from all customers on the grid is expected to rise from 14.6 gigawatts in 2024 to 19.9 gigawatts by 2030, the report states. 

A recent report from state utility regulators found data centers were driving that projected peak demand growth.

The report found that the state Public Service Commission modified proposals from We Energies and Alliant Energy establishing rates for data center-scale customers to shield existing residential customers from costs associated with data centers.

But it remains to be seen how data centers will affect transmission rates, which are set at the federal level, said Tyler Byrnes, one of the report’s authors. 

“It’s a little bit easier to do the math on one power plant for one data center, whereas you’re starting to divide up electrons moving across power lines (and) across state lines, so it’s more complicated,” he said.

He also said there is not currently an approved data center rate framework for developments of that scale outside the service territories of Alliant Energy and We Energies. He said policymakers may want to consider adopting a statewide framework for electric rates tied to data centers.

The report also notes that there are unresolved questions about whether utilities will be able to bring new energy generation and transmission lines online quickly enough to meet the growing demand.

This story was originally published by WPR.

Report: Wisconsin could make up taxes lost to data center incentives is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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The American Transmission Company (ATC) refiled an application on Monday for a sweeping series of grid upgrades in eastern Wisconsin, restarting the state’s six-month review of a project to plug the new Port Washington data center into the grid.

ATC, the state’s largest transmission utility, initially sought Wisconsin Public Service Commission permission last September, with plans to break ground as early as May 2026. Its initial application outlined a more than $1.3 billion infrastructure package, including a high-voltage transmission line and five new substations across Fond du Lac, Ozaukee, Sheboygan and Washington counties, needed to “reliably serve” the new data center by December 2027.

But the commission sent ATC back to the drawing board last month after the company repeatedly adjusted the project’s design, leaving the public with a hazy picture of the proposal, according to commission staff and ratepayer advocates.

Project’s design keeps changing

ATC has since stressed the urgency of the buildout needed to support the data center boom. The company is part of a coalition of utilities asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to speed up regional transmission projects needed to serve data centers by suspending competitive bidding, arguing that “bureaucratic red tape” presents a national security risk as the U.S. competes with China for “dominance” in the artificial intelligence race.

But the utility’s first application underwent multiple redesigns, including the addition of temporary bypass lines to avoid outages during construction. The PSC must review those changes and allow other parties, namely ratepayer advocates and affected landowners, an opportunity to weigh in. 

“I don’t recall any other comparable cases in my experience with as many application material document revisions and ongoing design changes throughout the process,” PSC Environmental Affairs Coordinator Adam Ingwell wrote in testimony filed in July. “The sheer volume of documents and revisions, without adequate explanation, likely makes it more challenging than typical for a member of the public to find specific information about the project.”

ATC, by contrast, cast the revisions as “routine.”

“Every application develops during review,” company attorneys wrote last month. “Changes far larger and later than ATC’s have never cast doubt” on whether an application should move forward, they added, citing a Barron County solar farm the PSC approved last March despite an “eleventh-hour” overhaul that included “relocating an entire substation.”

“There is simply no principled basis on which to treat ATC’s lesser and earlier changes more harshly,” the attorneys wrote. 

The three-member commission in August unanimously sided with ATC’s critics, directing ATC to  submit a new application to give the public a better opportunity to assess the full package. 

“This PSC is not opposed or hostile to data centers, construction, generation, (or) transmission,” PSC Chair Summer Strand said, calling the decision “an unfortunate outcome.” Nevertheless, she added, “this application represents a cautionary tale of when unrealistic and unreasonable speed-to-power expectations collide with a deliberative regulatory process.”

How latest application differs

ATC’s new application departs from the previous version in several ways, including removing a segment of transmission line through Trenton in Washington County and Saukville in Ozaukee County.

“The need for this project has not changed, but the application has,” Jared Winters,

ATC executive vice president and chief assets officer, said in a Monday press release.

The PSC will hold a new round of public comment on the project before determining whether it can move forward. That review will begin once the commission determines the new application is “complete.”

ATC restarts push for grid upgrades serving Port Washington data center is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Update: The city of Wisconsin Rapids announced Aug. 28 that its planning commission on Sept. 16 will hold a hearing and make a recommendation to the city council on the request for a conditional use permit for the proposed data center. 

Editor’s note: A breach-of-contract lawsuit in Pennsylvania against Andrey Sharkov remains pending, but a claim of fraud in the case was dismissed. This story has been updated to note the claim’s dismissal.

No matter where in the U.S. an artificial intelligence data center is proposed, communities express the same worries.

Water scarcity and contamination, electricity rates and reliability, air pollution, noise.

Residents are voicing those same concerns 100 miles north of Madison in Wisconsin Rapids, where developers want to replace a former paper mill with a 210-acre data center. 

But there’s another worry in Rapids that makes the situation different from other Wisconsin communities where data centers have been proposed:

Russians.

“I hear it from other people; people bring it up very often,” data center opponent Mary Olson said.

Ruslan Zinurov, the man who first proposed the data center, was born in Russia.

Anton Voronkin, who has since taken over the project, was born and educated in Russia and worked there for years.

Marissa Johnson, a leader of a group fighting the data center, said that while residents have environmental concerns, the Russian ties are “a sticking point for people.” Some residents don’t say so publicly, out of fear of being perceived as xenophobic, but they worry about the developers’ past business practices, she said.

The questions aren’t limited to whispering.

At public meetings, residents mostly express common fears: How much water will the data center use? Will my electricity rates go up? How can we know it won’t cause air and noise pollution? 

One woman urged city officials to “just do the right damn thing” and find any way to block data centers.

But at a city meeting in July, a woman said a “Russian national” had applied to the city for a permit for the data center.

In August, at a meeting organized by the team proposing the data center, one audience member drew applause from the audience when he said to Voronkin: 

“We like to know who’s running this operation. And from what I understand, you, sir, are not an American citizen; you’re Russian. Am I right or wrong?” 

Voronkin’s reply didn’t seem to satisfy the crowd. “I have worked in many countries overseas,” he said.

Russian born, Green Bay ties

The first record of the data center proposal is an email sent Dec. 16 by Zinurov to Wisconsin Rapids city planner Kyle Kearns. He wrote that he was looking to acquire a site in the city of 19,000 to convert into a data center. 

The location turned out to be part of a former paper mill site near downtown and the Wisconsin River.

Kearns replied the next day, writing: “It is exciting to hear about your interest!”

By February, Zinurov had met with Kearns and Mayor Matt Zacher. He said in an email that he was working to acquire part of the mill site. He wondered if the city could help secure electricity and natural gas for the operation.

The proposal didn’t make news until April, when the city planning commission announced a public hearing on Zinurov’s application for what is known as a conditional use permit.

The 43-year-old Zinurov identified himself as being with California-based Performance Computing Holdings. In a 2020 article about a Zinurov-led investment in Ukraine, Zinurov told the Kyiv Post he was born in Russia, his wife is Ukrainian and he had been living in the U.S. more than 15 years.

He also has Wisconsin ties.

Zinurov’s cellphone number has a 920 area code, which covers Green Bay. According to his LinkedIn profile, he has a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, plus a master’s degree in the same subject from the University of California, Berkeley.

Zinurov’s profile also says he founded a company originally known as Consensus Technology Group. In a 2024 interview, he said that company operates data centers in North Dakota, South Dakota, Pennsylvania and Missouri. 

According to news reports, Zinurov also partnered with Chinese tech company Bitmain to convert a former paper mill in Washington state into a cryptocurrency-mining business.

Zinurov declined Wisconsin Watch’s requests for an interview, noting in a text that Voronkin has taken over the Wisconsin Rapids project. 

Zinurov wrote that he “spent a good chunk of my life in Green Bay, so Wisconsin indeed has a special place in my heart. Go Pack.”

New face of the project

As Zinurov has worked behind the scenes, Voronkin, 42, has become the public face of the Rapids proposal.

By early May, a week after Zinurov filed the permit application, city planner Kearns had turned to emailing with Voronkin instead. Kearns noted that Voronkin and one of his team members, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams, had made plans to visit Wisconsin Rapids.

Adams’ background has also riled some residents. While mayor, he was indicted on federal conspiracy charges, which he denied. In April 2025, the charges were dismissed at the request of the U.S. Justice Department.

Voronkin, who was born in Russia, says in his LinkedIn profile that he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in St. Petersburg, Russia. The profile says he worked in commercial development in Russia from 2009 to 2022, when he began development work on Neom, a $500 billion ​mega-project in Saudi Arabia.

The nonprofit group Human Rights Watch reported in December 2024 that Neom workers suffered abuse, such as being paid less than they were promised. The same month, a Wall Street Journal investigation found Neom employees reported incidents of gang rape, suicide, attempted murder and drug dealing on the site. 

In 2026, Voronkin became chief development officer, including for data centers, at PNK Group, a New York-based developer of industrial buildings. 

PNK began operations in Russia around 2003, according to the Scranton Times-Tribune in Pennsylvania, where PNK is proposing a data center. 

Voronkin said at the August meeting in Wisconsin Rapids hosted by his team that PNK “withdrew the brand from Russia in 2024.”

Data center opponent Mike Schmidt, a local attorney, said he doesn’t trust PNK because of Voronkin’s work with Neom and what Schmidt described as corruption allegations against PNK owner Andrey Sharkov.

In two federal court lawsuits over business matters, Sharkov was accused of fraud in Pennsylvania and is the subject of a racketeer/corrupt organization lawsuit in Utah. Both cases are pending, but the fraud allegation in the Pennsylvania case has been dismissed, and Sharkov has denied the allegations.

“It’s not just that they’re Russian, it’s that they’re behaving in a corrupt fashion,” Schmidt said of Voronkin and Sharkov.

Voronkin declined Wisconsin Watch requests for an interview. In messages, he wrote: 

“I am not aware of such concern about my work for Neom. I am proud to be a part of the biggest development in the world and most likely in history. I wish more people had same level of ambitions and could think about the future same way as Neom. There are no corruption charges against Andrey Sharkov.”

He added: 

“I have indeed worked on some unique projects, but I don’t think my background is the most exciting subject for Wisconsin Rapids.”

City nearly poised to act?

Mayor Zacher told Wisconsin Watch that perhaps 15 data center developers and another 15 manufacturers have explored the former mill site but most didn’t move forward. According to his understanding, most data center developers didn’t think enough electricity was available. 

Zacher said he has tried to remain neutral as the current data center proposal has advanced and opposition has increased. The city must consider business proposals based on the project’s merits, not who makes them, he said.

Voronkin’s group has continued to try to build local support, holding a series of four webinars in August.

Zacher said the city is waiting for Voronkin’s group to provide more details on their proposal before it acts on their application for a conditional use permit and indicated the waiting time is limited.

“I would say we don’t want to go months,” he said.

In Wisconsin Rapids, data center objections include developers’ Russian connections is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Microsoft and Wisconsin ratepayer advocates are asking federal regulators to hit the brakes on a proposal to allocate the costs of transmission infrastructure built to serve data centers. 

Both argue that We Energies and the American Transmission Company’s (ATC) recent proposal to federal regulators fails to adequately protect Wisconsinites from picking up the construction bill, among other concerns. 

The utilities’ plan — setting a minimum transmission charge for Microsoft based on its Mount Pleasant data center’s anticipated electricity needs — mirrors elements of a strategy approved by Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) earlier this year. 

We Energies and ATC argue the minimum charge will help prevent their other customers from paying for overbuilt infrastructure if the facility uses less electricity than anticipated.

Microsoft and ratepayer advocates, however, argue that the proposal falls short on protecting Wisconsinites from cost shifts and that the two closely related utilities left little room for input from those most affected. 

Who pays for data center transmission upgrades?

ATC anticipates spending more than $500 million to upgrade the Mount Pleasant facility’s connection to the electrical grid. The utility passes infrastructure costs to customers of all kinds through their electrical bills; We Energies, for instance, estimates that transmission-related costs account for about 10% of customers’ bills. 

The PSC can’t require ATC to bill data center developers for the full cost of infrastructure built to serve them. Only the five-member Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees interstate transmission, could overhaul billing rules to fully shield other customers from the costs of new lines and substations for data centers.

The PSC signed off on a work-around this spring, requiring We Energies to set a minimum transmission charge for its large data center customers based on their projected electricity use — the same projections used to plan transmission upgrades. 

ATC and We Energies asked FERC earlier this month to approve a one-off transmission billing plan for Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant data center. The arrangement would require We Energies to pay ATC for the data center’s projected transmission capacity and pass that cost to Microsoft. The 15-year arrangement would take effect once ATC completes the infrastructure needed to serve the facility. 

“This is a customer protection mechanism that follows the ‘cost causer, cost payer’ methodology,” an ATC spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.

Microsoft says proposal leaves gaps

The utilities didn’t consult with Microsoft before filing their plan with federal regulators.

“The entire purpose of these agreements, by ATC’s own description,” is to serve the Mount Pleasant data center, Microsoft’s attorneys wrote in a protest to FERC on Friday. Moving ahead without Microsoft’s input, they added, would risk “the timely interconnection and operation of this infrastructure.”

In their view, the utilities’ current proposal contains “systemic” flaws.

Some, they argue, pose risks to Microsoft’s finances, including an early termination fee that could force the company to pay “excessively more” than the remaining value of the transmission infrastructure if it backs out of the agreement before the 15-year mark.

Both Microsoft and the Citizens Utility Board (CUB) argue other elements of the proposal pose risks to ATC’s other ratepayers, including those outside of We Energies’ territory.

In a separate protest filed Friday, CUB regulatory affairs director Corey Singletary noted that the proposal would base minimum transmission charges on ATC’s standard interconnection rates.

“The electric demands and associated supporting infrastructure investments are so large relative to traditional loads and investments” that ATC will almost certainly undershoot the actual cost of data centers’ transmission needs,  Singletary wrote. 

“While ATC’s proposal would likely be an improvement over the status quo,” he added, it still falls short of shielding the utility’s other customers from data-center-driven transmission costs.

Microsoft’s attorneys echoed those concerns, emphasizing that Microsoft signed the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge this spring: a commitment to “pay for all new power delivery infrastructure upgrades required to service (its) data centers” and “ensure that these expenses are not passed on to the ordinary household.”

Microsoft urges more scrutiny

We Energies’ parent company, WEC Energy Group, is ATC’s largest shareholder.

“A negotiated bilateral contract between them — especially one involving such large sums — should be further scrutinized,” Microsoft’s attorneys wrote.

Microsoft also pointed out that the proposal wouldn’t require the utilities to seek their company’s input before amending some terms of the contract, nor would it “create a clear path for Microsoft (or anyone else) to inquire and scrutinize the scope or prudence of expenditures made on its behalf.” 

Microsoft’s attorneys called that opacity “a recipe for future misunderstanding and litigation.”

Microsoft is asking FERC to send the entire proposal to a settlement judge, creating a venue for all parties to work through their concerns. As an alternative, the company’s attorneys suggested that the commission reject the utilities’ proposal outright. CUB, meanwhile, urged the commission to create a uniform transmission cost allocation process for all large data centers in ATC’s territory — including those in Port Washington and Beaver Dam.

ATC has yet to file a response to the complaints. 

“ATC is reviewing Microsoft’s filing and will respond through the established FERC process to demonstrate that existing customers are fully protected by the agreements,” a spokesperson wrote in an email on Tuesday. “We remain committed to cost transparency and protection of existing customers while ensuring reliable transmission service.”

Microsoft, ratepayer advocates challenge ATC plan for data center transmission costs is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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President Donald Trump, speaking alongside cryptocurrency leaders at the White House this week, made a statement that Republican and Democratic candidates alike wouldn’t touch with a 10-foot pole.

“If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant or a data center,” Trump said, “I would absolutely want it because the jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid, are just enormous.”

It’s not the kind of message anyone is using in competitive midterm races.

The race to build data centers, which power artificial intelligence and cloud computing, has run aground amid frustration from voters who don’t want to live near the massive warehouse campuses. Even the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm warned that anger over data centers — some of which dwarf football stadiums and use more energy than small cities — could cost them a seat.

Opposition stretches across the political spectrum because of fears that the behemoths will jack up electricity bills, drain people’s water wells, create unhealthy amounts of air and noise pollution and forever change a community’s character — all while getting lucrative tax breaks from states competing for their business.

Trump has framed data centers as a necessary component of a top national and economic security priority: winning the AI race against China. However, he also has acknowledged concern over rising electricity bills, previously saying “it’s only fair” for the companies to shoulder their costs.

He also suggested this week that data centers need “a little public relations help.” In recent months, he has gotten tech giants to sign a voluntary pledge to shield U.S. consumers from higher utility bills from data centers, even as he pushes to streamline the process for companies and utilities to build their own power plants.

But building power plants doesn’t happen overnight, and the immediate political reality for candidates across the country is far different.

“It is yet another dimension in which the White House appears tone deaf — tone deaf at best and indifferent to the interest of other Republican candidates at worst,” said James Henson, the director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas, Austin, a nonpartisan research organization.

Republican committee issues warning over data centers in Ohio

Statewide candidates from Nevada to Wisconsin, both Republican and Democratic, are weaponizing data centers against their opponents, and candidates who absorb those attacks are subsequently trying to distance themselves from them.

In Ohio, a data center hot spot with closely contested races for governor and U.S. Senate, the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned in a memo Tuesday that Sen. Jon Husted is vulnerable to losing his seat because of the centers.

Democratic nominee Sherrod Brown is airing attack ads against Husted that call him the “face of data centers in Ohio” as people gather signatures for a statewide referendum to ban their construction.

The Republican memo said it’s been a “sleeper issue for the entire election cycle.”

“Brown is using it because it works,” the NRSC said. “More than any other thing in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck. If he loses and data centers get the blame, politicians across the country will take notice — and they will not go near the next one.”

The memo suggested voters may balk at Democratic candidates who want to stop data center construction altogether in favor of a Republican candidate who only wants data centers built if a community approves it in a local vote and it pays for its own power, water and other utilities.

Most registered voters oppose building a data center in their area, according to a July Fox News poll.

Still, the issue falls behind other voter concerns, such as cost of living, as November looms. A Quinnipiac Poll conducted in June asked voters what issues were important in deciding who to vote for in U.S. House elections, and about 4 in 10 mentioned AI data centers.

Trump’s statement already put to use in Nevada race

In Nevada, Democrat Aaron Ford quickly tied Trump’s statement to Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, characterizing them as being in “lockstep on data centers.”

In a statement, Ford said Trump and Lombardo are “Nevada data centers’ biggest cheerleaders” who “only care about catering to their ‘billionaire friends’ while Nevadans pay the price.”

Ford this week unveiled a policy platform in which he said he would halt new state tax breaks for data centers — he estimated them at $200 million currently — while auditing existing projects to ensure they are delivering on promises. He also said he would ensure data centers pay for their electricity needs, do not deplete Nevada’s water supply and help local governments negotiate strong benefits agreements with developers.

Texas’ governor changed course and got a jab from Trump

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who last November celebrated Google’s announcement of a $40 billion investment there by calling the state “the epicenter of AI development,” is under attack from his Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa, over his pursuit of data center development.

Abbott has since changed course by promising tougher action, such as removing the state’s sales tax exemption and holding up projects to review their energy usage.

Trump criticized the shift, saying “I think it’s a mistake” in a recent interview with Punchbowl News.

Asked about Trump’s support for data centers, Abbott’s office said the governor’s “top priority is to protect Texans’ safety and quality of life and ensure the integrity of our power grid and water supply.”

“Simply put, Texans must come first,” Abbott’s office said.

Data centers complicated Wisconsin governor race

While Trump embraces data centers, even some of his allies are using them for political attacks. U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, running for Wisconsin governor, released a TV ad this week branding his Democratic opponent as “Data Center David Crowley.”

The ad includes a clip of Crowley saying Wisconsin could become the “AI and data hub not only for the entire country, but for the entire globe.”

Crowley has said local communities must have veto authority while also calling data centers a part of the modern economy that could bring significant economic benefits to the state.

Tiffany, who Trump has endorsed, has also said positive things about data centers. In January, Tiffany called data centers “exciting new technology,” in an interview with PBS Wisconsin. And last December, he voted for a bipartisan bill known as the SPEED Act, which is designed to accelerate construction of new AI infrastructure projects like data centers. It hasn’t passed the Senate.

Neither Tiffany nor Crowley support a moratorium on new data center construction.

Tiffany has called for repealing the state tax incentive for data centers, while Crowley has not. They both have called for stricter regulation.

Crowley, at an event Wednesday where he received the endorsement of the environmental group Clean Wisconsin, downplayed the attacks Tiffany has made against his data center position.

“He’s getting very good at saying one thing and doing something different,” Crowley said, pointing to Tiffany’s votes in support of the SPEED Act.

“What Congressman Tom Tiffany’s doing is lying because he’s trying to run away from his record in Congress,” Crowley said.

This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press.

Trump embraces data centers as backlash shapes races in Wisconsin and nationwide is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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We Energies signed a new 20-year agreement to purchase electricity from the Point Beach nuclear plant in Manitowoc County, resolving uncertainty about the relationship between the utility and the state’s largest power plant. 

The agreement, disclosed in a Tuesday U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing, still requires sign-off from Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC).

The roughly 60-year-old facility is Wisconsin’s only active nuclear power plant. We Energies owned the plant until 2007, when it sold Point Beach to a Florida-based utility. It currently purchases most of the plant’s output from independent energy infrastructure giant NextEra Energy.

But the electricity Point Beach generates is particularly expensive. We Energies spends about twice as much on fuel as its sibling utility, Wisconsin Public Service Company; the cost of fuel for Point Beach accounts for a large share of the difference. Milwaukee-based WEC Energy Group owns both utilities. The price of each megawatt hour of electricity produced by the plant rises by more than 7% each year under We Energies’ current arrangement with NextEra.

Ratepayer advocates have pushed We Energies to rethink its Point Beach contract for years. The PSC directed the utility to work with ratepayer groups to “review alternatives” to the power purchase agreement in 2019 as part of a broader rate case, and WEC Energy Group CEO Scott Lauber signaled that his company was considering alternatives as recently as last month.

We Energies’ latest SEC filing did not divulge most details of the new agreement, but spokesman Brendan Conway told Wisconsin Watch that it “will provide customers with fuel savings compared with the current (agreement) when it goes into effect.” 

If the PSC approves the proposed agreement, We Energies would buy 86% of the plant’s energy for another two decades. Its current contract is set to expire by 2033, according to the new filing. 

Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board (CUB), a nonprofit representing residential and some small commercial electricity customers statewide before the PSC, is among the most vocal critics of the current Point Beach contract.

CUB plans to review the new proposal with an “eye toward learning how much savings are in store for customers” compared to the current steep annual price increases, said CUB Executive Director Tom Content. “Given the climate and carbon commitments of the tech companies, I’ll be interested to learn whether Big Tech companies opening data centers in eastern Wisconsin want the carbon-free benefits of nuclear. That could relieve some of the price pressure being felt — every year — by 1.1 million We Energies customers.” 

We Energies is also eyeing an opportunity to add more nuclear energy to Wisconsin’s grid: the decommissioned Kewaunee Power Station. WEC Energy Group and the plant’s owner, Energy Solutions, are awaiting the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval to restart production at the site more than a decade after a glut of cheap natural gas from the fracking boom drove it out of business. 

There’s no shortage of demand for electricity. A draft PSC report published in June projects Wisconsin’s peak electricity demand will rise 40% in the next five years, driven largely by new data centers in Port Washington, Mount Pleasant and Beaver Dam — possibly with more to come.

We Energies signs 20-year Point Beach nuclear power deal is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Oracle moved to voluntarily drop its lawsuit against Wisconsin’s utility regulator on Monday, nearly two months after the tech giant turned to the Ozaukee County Circuit Court to challenge new credit rating requirements for data center developers in eastern Wisconsin.

With the case put to rest, the credit rating rules — intended to shield other Wisconsin ratepayers from fallout in the event a data center developer goes bust — now stand unchallenged. Oracle previously argued the requirements were overly stringent and could dissuade other companies from setting up operations in Wisconsin.

Oracle’s share price has begun to rebound after a collapse that began in early June and continued for weeks after the company sued Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC). Its credit rating, however, remains well below the threshold at which it could avoid posting hundreds of millions of dollars in collateral as a condition of buying electricity for the Port Washington data center.

Vast power needs for data center

The Nashville-based cloud computing firm is a co-developer of the data center campus in Port Washington. The trio behind the project — Oracle, OpenAI and data center developer Vantage — expect the facility to require 1.3 gigawatts of electrical generation capacity in its first phase, or enough to power roughly a million Wisconsin homes.

We Energies, Wisconsin’s largest investor-owned utility, must meet the campus’ energy needs by a tentative late-2027 deadline.

The Port Washington facility’s energy needs are so vast — an order of magnitude greater than the Saukville steel mill that was, until recently, Wisconsin’s largest electricity user —  that state rules require it to buy its electricity under a specialized rate structure.

The PSC approved that rate structure for We Energies’ largest data center customers in May. Among other rules, the commission’s order requires the facilities’ operators to pay for the construction of new power plants needed to meet their energy needs.

But constructing a new plant can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and any unpaid debts tied to the plants could fall on We Energies’ other customers if a data center operator becomes insolvent.

To shield ratepayers from a potential cost shift, the PSC set an A- credit rating threshold for data center operators seeking electric service from We Energies. Companies below the threshold must post steep collateral, either in cash or lines of credit.

That requirement could cost Oracle over $100 million per year in financial security payments. The company held a BBB credit rating when the PSC approved the credit rating standards, largely because of its aggressive borrowing to finance artificial intelligence ventures and its business relationship with OpenAI. 

S&P Global Ratings, one of the “Big Three” credit rating agencies responsible for assessing creditworthiness of government and corporate debt, lowered Oracle’s rating to a BBB- on July 9 — the bottom edge of the agency’s “investment-grade” tier.

PSC declines to reopen case

We Energies asked the PSC to reconsider the rule in June, arguing that the added cost could dissuade other companies from operating in Wisconsin. The PSC declined the request last month, and We Energies CEO Scott Lauber reassured investors on a recent quarterly earnings call that the credit requirements pose no threat to the Port Washington project’s viability.

Oracle, however, sued the commission in Ozaukee County Circuit Court as a backup to the reopener request. The company’s June lawsuit asked Judge Sandy Williams to “set aside, reverse, and remand” the credit rating requirements, arguing that they aren’t “needed to prevent harm” to We Energies’ other customers or shareholders.

The commission responded last month, accusing Oracle of trying to dodge regulatory scrutiny by seeking “to overturn over one-hundred years of established caselaw” and “dictate one-off preferential terms of service” with We Energies.

Questions remain for data center developers

Oracle’s attorneys filed a motion to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit early on Monday morning.

Ratepayer advocates who supported the credit rating requirements celebrated the end of the lawsuit.

“We were confident the PSC would win and that the consumer protection safeguards the CUB team sought would remain in place,” said Tom Content, executive director of Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board. 

“CUB believes the safeguards the PSC established are critical to protect We Energies customers from the risks of tech companies overextending their borrowing, calling into question the long-run solvency of those companies.”

“This is an important win for Wisconsin since these safeguards — which We Energies claims would  ‘narrow the pool of investors’ for AI data center projects — could be used as a blueprint in other parts of the state,” said Clean Wisconsin spokesperson Amy Barrilleaux. 

The end of one legal fight doesn’t guarantee smooth sailing for the Port Washington project. The PSC voted last week to require the American Transmission Company (ATC) — the transmission utility responsible for connecting the data center to the grid — to restart the six-month application process to build the requisite transmission lines and substations, citing a series of design changes the utility made after the commission began reviewing its proposal.

Though the redo will leave ATC little time to meet its December 2027 deadline to plug in the Port Washington data center, the company has yet to announce changes to its timeline. 

Meanwhile, data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure signaled that it is considering developing facilities in Madison Gas and Electric’s territory. The utility, which serves the core of the Madison metropolitan area, is awaiting the PSC’s input on its own data center rate structure. 

MGE’s proposal would also require developers with credit ratings below A- to post collateral, with lower collateral requirements for companies rated BBB+ than for those with BBB ratings or below.

Oracle drops lawsuit challenging Wisconsin data center credit rules is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Wisconsin regulators voted Thursday to send the American Transmission Company (ATC) back to the drawing board as the utility attempts to build the grid infrastructure needed to plug in the Port Washington data center. 

Public Service Commission (PSC) Chair Summer Strand called the move a “reasonable reset” after ATC repeatedly adjusted the project’s design, which commission staff and ratepayer advocates argued left both regulators and the public with a muddy picture of a grid expansion expected to cost well over $1 billion. 

ATC and its partners, however, warned the decision — likely the first of its kind for the century-old commission — could set a dangerous precedent that drives away investment in Wisconsin’s energy sector.

Data center connection at risk

ATC, which owns and operates transmission lines in the eastern half of Wisconsin, is on the hook to connect the soon-to-open Port Washington data center to the electrical grid. 

The company approached the PSC last September for permission to break ground on the project as early as this past May. Its initial application outlined a more than $1.3 billion infrastructure package, including a high-voltage transmission line and five new substations spread across Fond du Lac, Ozaukee, Sheboygan and Washington counties, needed to “reliably serve” the new data center by December 2027. After two months of back-and-forth over the “completeness” of ATC’s application, the commission took up the proposal in December 2025. 

ATC has since been vocal about the urgency of the infrastructure buildout needed to support the data center boom. The company is part of a coalition of utilities asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to speed up regional transmission projects needed to serve data centers by suspending competitive bidding, arguing that “bureaucratic red tape” presents a national security risk as the U.S. competes with China for “dominance” in the artificial intelligence race. 

Meanwhile, the utility has repeatedly adjusted its plans since December, redesigning proposed routes and adding a set of temporary bypass lines needed to avoid outages during construction. The PSC is responsible for reviewing those changes and giving other parties, namely ratepayer advocates and affected landowners, an opportunity to weigh in. 

Some commission staff sounded the alarm as the pile of revisions — and questions — grew.

“I don’t recall any other comparable cases in my experience with as many application material document revisions and ongoing design changes throughout the process,” PSC Environmental Affairs Coordinator Adam Ingwell wrote in testimony filed last month. “The sheer volume of documents and revisions, without adequate explanation, likely makes it more challenging than typical for a member of the public to find specific information about the project.”

Those concerns reached Administrative Law Judge Michael Newmark, who criticized ATC for creating an “unreasonable burden” on commission staff and the public by scattering “a plethora of changes, modifications and updates” across six months of filings. 

ATC, on the other hand, cast the revisions as “routine.”

“Every application develops during review,” the company’s attorneys wrote on Wednesday. “Changes far larger and later than ATC’s have never cast doubt” on whether an application should move forward, they added, citing a Barron County solar farm the PSC approved last March despite an “eleventh-hour” overhaul that included “relocating an entire substation.”

“There is simply no principled basis on which to treat ATC’s lesser and earlier changes more harshly,” the attorneys wrote. 

Ratepayer advocates weigh in

Ratepayer advocates generally avoid wading into fights over transmission line routes and substation siting, which Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board (CUB) Regulatory Affairs Director Corey Singletary described as a “zero-sum proposition” in which a victory for one group of landowners means shifting construction impacts onto another group of landowners.

But CUB raised concerns that ATC’s revisions make it difficult to forecast the project’s cost.

The route changes and new bypasses make the price tag “a moving target,” said CUB Executive Director Tom Content, as does the possibility that ATC still attempts to complete the project by December 2027. “Would they be paying double overtime or triple overtime to build it that quickly?” 

The Wisconsin Utility Association itself weighed in on Wednesday to warn the PSC that any additional delays in the project will “lead to increased costs for customers.”

Transmission utilities generally pass along the costs of new infrastructure to ratepayers of all kinds via their electrical bills; We Energies, for instance, estimates that transmission-related costs account for about 10% of customers’ bills. 

The PSC can’t require ATC to assign project costs to the companies developing the Port Washington data center. Only FERC, the five-person federal regulator that oversees interstate transmission, could overhaul billing rules to fully shield other customers from the costs of new lines and substations needed to serve data centers.

The commission offered an ad hoc solution this spring. The PSC’s May order creating a new billing structure for We Energies’ data center customers requires data center operators to pay a minimum transmission charge based on their projected electricity use. Wisconsin PSC Commissioner Kristi Nieto called the arrangement a “temporary stopgap measure” to protect other customers from the costs of overbuilt infrastructure if data centers use less electricity than anticipated. 

ATC and We Energies have since asked the PSC and FERC to approve a minimum transmission charge agreement with Microsoft, the operator of the vast new data center in Mount Pleasant. “This is a customer protection mechanism that follows the ‘cost causer, cost payer’ methodology,” an ATC spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.

The utilities have not yet asked the commission to approve similar agreements with the companies developing the Port Washington facility: cloud computing giant Oracle, artificial intelligence firm OpenAI and data center developer Vantage.

In testimony filed last month, Singletary urged the commission to enforce “cost containment” measures for ATC’s project, including requiring the utility to cap its annual revenues from the new transmission lines. He also suggested that the commission push ATC to disclose any bids it receives for “work to be performed and equipment to be procured as part of this project,” which he argued would help keep an eye on the company’s efforts to rein in costs. 

‘Least-bad option’

All three commissioners aired matching frustrations during a Thursday afternoon hearing on ATC’s infrastructure plans before concurring on what Commissioner Marcus Hawkins called the “least-bad option” — requiring ATC to resubmit its application and restarting the case’s 180-day clock.

“There needs to be flexibility in the process,” said Nieto, “but there also has to be some point at which the changes become significant enough that we need to evaluate whether we are still reviewing the same project that was originally proposed.”

“This PSC is not opposed or hostile to data centers, construction, generation, (or) transmission,” Strand said, calling the decision “an unfortunate outcome.” Nevertheless, she added, “this application represents a cautionary tale of when unrealistic and unreasonable speed-to-power expectations collide with a deliberative regulatory process.”

ATC has not indicated when it will resubmit its application as of Thursday afternoon, nor whether the December 2027 deadline is still within reach. “ATC is disappointed with today’s Commission’s decision and is considering its options,” a company spokesperson wrote after the hearing. 

But the company’s final filing before the hearing signaled the possibility of a legal fight. “To date, the Commission has processed the application consistent with the law,” the company’s attorneys wrote. “At this stage,” restarting the process “would be the one action to depart from that.”

Wisconsin regulators send ATC back to the drawing board on data center connection project is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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A year ago, most Wisconsin residents thought little about data centers.

But today, the computing facilities — and where they get their energy — are a key issue in the hotly contested Aug. 11 Democratic primary for Wisconsin governor.

At a lively town hall last week in Milwaukee, five Democratic candidates vied to outdo their peers in tough talk about data centers and their developers, described as ​“Big Tech oligarchs” by state Rep. Francesca Hong, the leading contender according to recent polling.

Whoever wins the nomination will likely run against Tom Tiffany, a Republican candidate and a current U.S. representative for north and central Wisconsin. He too has focused part of his campaign on curbing data centers, promising to prevent the use of farmland for the facilities and repeal tax breaks for them. But unlike the Democratic hopefuls arguing that AI facilities should be powered largely by clean energy, Tiffany is pushing state regulators to keep decades-old coal plants online past their retirement dates to help meet ballooning power demand.

While data centers are an increasingly hot-button topic nationwide in the run-up to the November elections, the tension is particularly pronounced in Wisconsin as developers have recently flocked to the state, drawn by its cool climate, access to water, robust transmission and generation infrastructure, and generous tax incentives passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature and signed by current Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in 2023.

That’s spiked public fears about the facilities’ impacts, including that the boom in energy demand will drive a buildout of polluting power plants and increase household utility bills. A July 22 Marquette University Law School poll found that over three-quarters of Wisconsin voters say the costs of data centers outweigh the benefits, up from 55% in October 2025. Almost nine out of 10 Democrats and two-thirds of Republicans who answered the poll held this viewpoint.

We Energies, the utility serving over a million customers primarily in southeast Wisconsin, is planning to meet data centers’ power demand with two new gas plants, one of which would be the state’s second largest. Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s first hyperscale data center went online this summer near Milwaukee. That and another data center under construction not far away in Port Washington are expected to need 3.9 gigawatts of power — far more than is used by all the homes in the state combined.

“This story isn’t going away. It will only grow in importance to people,” said Elizabeth Ward, director of the Sierra Club’s Wisconsin chapter. ​“People are worried about air pollution, water pollution, land impacts, especially when gas plants are being built just to serve data centers. We hope to have a strong governor who passes safeguards against them.”

How the candidates want to curb data centers

All the Democratic candidates at the data center–focused town hall vowed to keep the industry on a tight leash and ensure that community protections are enforced by the Legislature, governor’s office, utility regulators, and state agencies.

Hong, the choice of 38% of respondents in a July 29 poll by Marquette University Law School, is calling for a moratorium on data center development to give the state time to develop a robust regulatory framework. New York’s Democratic governor instated a similar policy last month, the first of its kind in the U.S.

While none of the other candidates support a moratorium, each says they would aggressively pursue ratepayer protections and clean energy investments from data centers and utilities that serve them.

Hong calls her data center plan ​“Control-Alt-Delete,” and her website says that ​“if a community decides it wants to proceed with data center construction, it needs to be powered by clean energy.” She says taxes paid by data center developers should be invested in a green bank to fund energy and climate solutions, and utilities should be forced to report how much energy large customers use, to ensure regular customers aren’t footing the bill. Hong also advocates for the expansion of public utilities, which her campaign says currently provide 11% of the state’s power and charge significantly lower prices than We Energies does.

Joel Brennan, a civic leader and former official in Evers’ administration, wants to make data centers invest in larger transmission upgrades and clean energy. At the town hall, he said the Legislature needs to pass a law codifying the commitment to 100% carbon-free energy by 2050 that Evers set with a 2019 executive order. He also said data centers should use battery storage instead of diesel generators for backup power.

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said he’d order data centers to bring their own 100% clean energy to the grid. Crowley had dropped out of the race July 8, then reentered 10 days later, and won Evers’ endorsement when another candidate — Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez — withdrew.

State Sen. Kelda Roys pledged to work with the Legislature to ​“immediately pass” a bill introduced by Democrats in the last session that would — among other things — require data centers to get at least 70% of their energy from renewables in order to qualify for tax breaks. (Republicans backed a separate data center bill in the last session that likewise did not advance.)

Roys previously told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, which sponsored the town hall, that she would require ​“significant upfront payments from large data center projects, hundreds of millions of dollars each, to capitalize a public clean energy infrastructure bank,” which would provide zero-interest revolving loans for clean energy upgrades to public buildings.

Longtime environmental justice advocate and former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes was also at the town hall and pledged to demand a renewable energy commitment from data centers. But he withdrew from the increasingly chaotic primary contest the day after the event.

It appears the November election will be a close one. Polls show Hong and Tiffany evenly matched, with people largely voting along party lines. Wisconsin is a purple state, with Republicans modestly outnumbering Democrats, and independent voters making up about a third of the electorate.

Coal plant concerns mount

Wisconsin Rapids residents Aryana Khan and Cloey Hilliker drove nearly three hours to attend the town hall. A proposal for a data center on the site of a defunct paper mill has drawn controversy in their town. Khan has asthma and worries that fossil fuel generation that is built or continues to run to fuel data centers will have serious health impacts on Wisconsinites.

“Why should a Silicon Valley man that was born into wealth get to dictate whether or not I can open my windows because the air is so bad I can’t breathe?” Khan told Canary Media. ​“This is an industry that will not last long. Something new will come along that is shiny, and people will flock to it, and we will have overbuilt for an obsolete technology.”

During the town hall, Peg Sheaffer, spokesperson for the public interest law firm Midwest Environmental Advocates, lamented that utilities are rolling back their plans to retire coal plants because of data centers.

“What actions would your administration take to hold utilities accountable and to keep Wisconsin on track to retire coal-fired power plants?” she asked the candidates.

Hong suggested that a public health expert should be added to the state’s Public Service Commission, whose three members are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state Senate, for staggered six-year terms.

Multiple candidates emphasized the role that the Public Service Commission plays in deciding where data centers get their energy, and who pays. Brennan called the commission a ​“black box for people outside state government” and ​“one of the most powerful entities inside state government.”

The commission has long been criticized for acquiescing to utilities’ requests to raise rates and invest in fossil fuels. Roys referred to the body under former Republican Gov. Scott Walker as ​“lapdogs for utilities.”

But the regulatory body has recently taken some steps to limit data centers’ impacts. In April, the commission instituted a special electricity rate for data centers in the Milwaukee-area service territory of We Energies to prevent regular customers from paying for the energy to serve data centers, a move praised by environmental and consumer advocates.

Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, a consumer watchdog group, thinks the gubernatorial race helped influence the commission to reject We Energies’ original proposal and institute a standard that goes further to protect ratepayers.

“You had candidates on the right and the far left that said the Public Service Commission is not doing its job,” Content told Canary Media. ​“I think the commissioners themselves were like, ​‘We’re going to side with the consumer.’”

Content and other advocates said that data centers underscore Wisconsin’s need for integrated resource planning, a centralized process that many other states use to ensure demand is met with the most cost-effective and cleanest energy. Currently, Wisconsin regulators consider utility proposals piecemeal.

Roys is in favor of such a reform. At the town hall, she said, ​“The fastest, cheapest new sources of energy are wind and solar, and I’ll add geothermal in there, too.”

She noted that energy efficiency, grid improvements and virtual power plants can help utilities retire coal plants even as electricity demand grows.

“There’s so much that we can do, some of it enabled by modern technology and AI to actually make better use of what we’re already generating, and to waste less,” she said. ​“This is absolutely within our reach.”

A version of this article was first published by Canary Media.

Data centers take center stage in Wisconsin governor’s race is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Click here to read highlights from the story

• Microsoft’s new 15-year electric service contract with We Energies includes outdated language limiting where power plants serving its Mount Pleasant data center could be located.
• The Public Service Commission rejected the geographic restriction, which would have limited Microsoft’s access to wind energy from neighboring states.
• We Energies says the commission’s order — not the outdated contract language — will govern Microsoft’s power purchases.
• Consumer advocates question why We Energies asked Microsoft to sign a contract that didn’t reflect regulators’ decision.

Microsoft’s new 15-year electric service contract for its Mount Pleasant data center includes a provision Wisconsin regulators previously rejected. 

Signed last month, the agreement with We Energies specifies that power plants built or purchased to serve data centers must be located in eastern Wisconsin or Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) voted in May to remove those geographic constraints, which critics argued would cut off Microsoft’s access to abundant wind power generated elsewhere in the Midwest and Great Plains. 

We Energies says it will follow the commission’s order — as opposed to the contract’s language — while it works with the commission to resolve the discrepancy. In the meantime, some observers question how an outdated version of a high-stakes contract made it this far.

Where should data centers look for power? 

The mismatch traces back to one of many disagreements that arose during the PSC’s deliberations on a new rate structure for large data center customers: Should those facilities rely on nearby plants alone or be free to tap energy sources elsewhere?

The PSC-approved rate structure allows large data center operators to “subscribe” to new power plants, picking up the bill for purchasing or constructing them in exchange for the right to use the electricity they generate and revenue from selling surplus electricity on the wholesale market.

We Energies argued that those plants should be located as close as possible to the data centers they would serve. 

Longer distances would increase the risk of grid failures disrupting data center operations, WEC Energy Group Director of Planning Jody Arendt told the PSC in January. WEC Energy Group is We Energies’ holding company.

The local power plants would be within the territory of the American Transmission Company (ATC), a transmission utility in which We Energies owns a majority stake — a relationship that could simplify coordinating repairs and upgrades, Arendt said.

Ratepayer advocates and clean energy groups criticized the plan, arguing it would limit data centers’ access to wind energy. 

Electricity generated by onshore wind farms is, by some measures, cheaper than electricity generated by new natural gas plants. The Midwest’s regional grid operator has approved billions of dollars in grid upgrades over the past five years, in part to streamline transmitting wind energy from regions with high winds to population centers and industrial hubs. 

We Energies fully or partially owns a half-dozen planned and operational wind farms in Wisconsin, including the new Badger Hollow wind farm in Iowa and Grant counties. But neighboring states — especially Iowa and Minnesota — have far higher average wind speeds and generate vastly more wind power.

“Any Wisconsin customers should be able to benefit from lower cost resources like the wind profile in southern Minnesota,” Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board Executive Director Tom Content wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. 

The PSC ultimately sided with CUB and clean energy groups, striking the location constraints from the data center rate structure it approved in May. 

“Over-indexing on a smaller geographic area comes with its own risks,” said Commissioner Marcus Hawkins, adding that planned grid upgrades could resolve some of the challenges of powering data centers from afar. 

Outdated contract

With the rate structure approved, We Energies sent Microsoft a contract to implement the new rate structure.

Microsoft asked the PSC in June to reopen the case, in part to address “multiple errors or inconsistencies” in We Energies’ contract — including the provision limiting new power plants to eastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula.

We Energies offered to drop the line, among other “ministerial changes that could streamline or improve” the contract.

After the PSC declined to reopen the case, Microsoft signed the contract as-is on July 16. A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on the contract.

Because the commission “did not reopen their decision or take up these changes,” the utility still needs to work with the PSC to fix the contracts, We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway wrote in an email. “We do not have a timeline for when the language will be updated.”

“From a practical perspective,” he added, Microsoft will be held to the PSC-approved rules, meaning it can subscribe to plants outside of eastern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula. 

The companies are legally required to abide by the PSC’s terms, commission spokesperson Meghan Sovey-Lashua wrote in an email.

“To the degree there are conflicts” with the PSC’s order, Sovey-Lashua added, “there are procedural options” to bring the issue back to the commission for a resolution.

Ratepayer advocates, meanwhile, wonder why We Energies asked Microsoft to sign an outdated version of the contract in the first place. 

“There’s a basic and common-sense expectation that a utility’s filing would be revised to reflect changes the PSC made to a proposal,” Content wrote, “particularly for an issue that generated a fair amount of discussion during the seven-hour deliberation on this issue.” 

Microsoft has already signed up to purchase electricity from the planned Red Oak Ridge Energy Center in Kenosha County. We Energies is currently asking the PSC for permission to buy the natural gas plant from developer Invenergy for $1.8 billion while Invenergy awaits PSC approval to build the plant. 

We Energies says Microsoft won’t be held to contract terms that conflict with state regulators’ order is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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It didn’t get much attention at the time, but last fall an out-of-state developer proposed an artificial intelligence data center 35 miles north of Madison in Columbia County.

At $10 billion, it would have been the third-largest data center to come to Wisconsin.

The Maryland-based Stonebridge real estate development company isn’t saying why it stopped exploring a site in Pacific, a town of about 2,800 people. 

But town chair Steven Pate told Wisconsin Watch there was no follow-up after he told Stonebridge executive Douglas Firstenberg that the proposal would have to be aired publicly.

“You’re going to talk to me, you’re going to talk to all five (town board members) and it’s going to be a public meeting,” Pate said he recalled telling Firstenberg in what he said was their only conversation.

The first mention of the possible data center came last November in a local news report about a solar farm. Columbia County planning director Kurt Calkins said in the article that a developer was exploring a $10 billion data center in Pacific with 400 permanent jobs and an opening in 2027.

Nothing more ever became public.

Here’s the rest of the story.

Madison real estate attorney Kevin Ramakrishna made the first contact with Columbia County last August, according to emails Wisconsin Watch obtained from the county under the state public records law. 

Ramakrishna, who represented Stonebridge, wrote that he and Firstenberg first met with county officials in October. 

The next month, according to Ramakrishna, Firstenberg met with Pate.

The Pacific town clerk said she had no emails related to any data center.

Stonebridge has since accelerated its involvement with data centers in other parts of the country.

The company is promoting its plans for a $15 billion, 569-acre complex on the site of a former dynamite factory northwest of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. And it has won initial approval for a $2.6 billion, 1,300-acre data center in Fort Meade, near Tampa, Florida.

Firstenberg and Ramakrishna didn’t reply to requests for comment. 

Calkins said the county hasn’t heard from Stonebridge in months.

Although Stonebridge’s interest appears dead, Columbia County is bracing for more data center proposals.

Columbia County Board Supervisor Denise Brusveen introduced a policy change, adopted by the board in July, that prohibits supervisors from signing nondisclosure agreements regarding data centers.

The use of data center NDAs by local communities was revealed by Wisconsin Watch in January.

“I wanted to be very clear to the public that they should be able to trust us,” Brusveen said.

A $10 billion data center proposal vanished after a local official told the developer the process would have to unfold in public is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Earlier this year, the Madison suburb of DeForest abruptly rejected a $12 billion, 1,600-acre data center amid mounting public opposition.

In doing so, the village of 12,000 also turned down wide-ranging public benefits that some experts say could be a model for what communities can demand from hyperscale data center projects.

Wisconsin Watch reported in January that DeForest and other communities around the state had, for months, secretly worked on proposals for billion-dollar data centers before informing the public.

The day after the report, DeForest officials announced the project was “no longer viable.”

The retreat was a response to a swell of opposition fueled by outright objections to data centers, misinformation about their impact and anger over the proposal being kept quiet. 

Amid the controversy, little attention was paid to an agreement the village had negotiated with Virginia-based QTS Data Centers.

Here’s some of what the community could have received if the data center had come to fruition:

• A guaranteed amount of taxable property value for the data center of $1.2 billion, which would be worth an estimated $12 million annually in property tax payments to the village, schools and other taxing bodies.

• Tens of millions of dollars in payments toward the village’s signature natural feature, the Yahara River, as well as for affordable housing and other needs.

• Protections for nearby property owners and electricity ratepayers.

“You’re not seeing these in other development agreements,” said Tyler Byrnes, a researcher at the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum.

Local governments throughout Wisconsin, even where data centers have not been proposed, are adopting data center moratoriums. At the same time, data center development proposals are being considered in communities such as Kenosha, Menomonie, Wisconsin Rapids and Rock County.

Even though no data center was built in DeForest, the village’s agreement could offer guidance for future data center deals in Wisconsin.

‘Best package’

QTS’ proposal drew opposition because data centers have become inherently controversial, but also because DeForest would have had to annex 1,600 acres from the neighboring town of Vienna. Moreover, there was backlash to the news that DeForest staff were meeting with QTS representatives and Alliant Energy as early as March 2025 — seven months before announcing the proposal.

Three weeks before dropping the project, DeForest announced it had reached a pre-annexation agreement with QTS that put more than a dozen requirements on the developer.

“It’s our job to provide the best package that we can get from our development, to benefit the population and the village,” village Administrator Bill Chang recently told Wisconsin Watch.

The provisions are wide-ranging. Here’s an overview:

Guaranteed assessed value of at least $1.2 billion for 15 years 

QTS would have had to pay property taxes based on at least that amount, even if the actual valuation were lower. The village estimated that QTS would pay $12 million annually to local jurisdictions by 2031 and that over 15 years, a home with an assessed value of $400,000 would save $1,772 per year in property taxes.

“The tax benefits are big,” said professor Ross Milton, a local government tax expert at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Milton said the guarantee means that even if the data center’s property valuation didn’t reach $1.2 billion, the village would still receive the amount of property tax revenue as if it did, though other local taxing bodies would not.

Pay $50 million for community infrastructure

That funding would have included $100,000 annually for 15 years for preservation, restoration and other improvements for the Yahara River; paying $1.5 million toward a planned $15 million interstate interchange; contributing $200,000 annually for five years to the village’s affordable housing program; and creating a community solar energy project to help homeowners. 

Pay for public infrastructure

QTS would have paid for all public infrastructure improvements serving the data center, including water, sewer lines and roads.

The deal included on top of that a $1 million payment for a sewer main extension, completed in 2024, that would have served the data center.

Another provision would have paid for any police, fire and EMS vehicles and equipment necessary to address needs caused by the development. The developer also offered to provide emergency services, including an ambulance, to the development site for five years after signing of the agreement so as not to draw away from existing community services.

Also covered were planning and design of a public transit connection from DeForest to Madison and operation of the transit line during construction, as well as an alternative snowmobile trail through the property.

The developer also would have had to reimburse the village for water, sewer and stormwater expenses that would otherwise cause general rate increases. And QTS would have paid to install a wastewater monitoring station to measure effluent discharged from the data center. 

“QTS wanted to work with us,” Chang said. “They were willing to play ball, per se, to get into a position where it would make sense for the village to approve an annexation.”

Pay for power infrastructure

QTS would have paid for all improvements to electric power infrastructure needed to serve the data center without — subject to state regulation — affecting existing ratepayers.

The agreement included a commitment that the data center would draw 45% of its energy from solar, wind or other renewable resources. The agreement noted the developer had bought 750 megawatts of renewable energy credits for the project.

Protecting neighbors

The agreement would have committed the developer to repairing or replacing private wells, or connecting a home to municipal water, within a quarter-mile of the data center if the data center construction or operation contaminated the wells.

QTS also would have committed to buying residential properties within a quarter-mile of the data center if the property “is materially adversely affected by noise, vibration, private water supply contamination or other negative impacts” from the data center.

The purchase price would have been no less than 110% of the property’s assessed value.

Democratic candidates for governor have called for gaining benefits in data center deals. One of them, state Sen. Kelda Roys of Madison, supports creating a state team of experts to help communities negotiate with data center developers.

Reclaiming the site

If the DeForest center had been built but later stopped operating, the deal would have allowed the village to reclaim the site. Then the village would have been able to sell or lease the property or demolish the buildings on it.

QTS “did communicate that they are long-term-involved in their facilities and that they have, as one of their priorities, to be a good community partner,” said village Community Development Director Alex Allon.

One of the proposal’s opponents, former Vienna town board member Shawn Haney, said he had urged village staff to be more precise on some requirements of QTS, but that the staff “were definitely doing their homework and they had some good ideas in there. The concept behind it was good.”

No tax incremental financing

The agreement doesn’t include a tax incremental district, a common tax break that commits future property taxes from a land parcel’s anticipated increase in value to finance a proposed development. 

That “makes the proposal abundantly better” for residents, said Prescott Balch, who is sought out as an expert by data center opponents around Wisconsin.

The difference is that while a property is in a TID, it isn’t counted in the total value of the village’s property for tax purposes and therefore doesn’t lower taxes on other property owners until the TID is closed, Byrnes said.

Nevertheless, the sheer opposition to the data center far overshadowed what was in the pre-annexation agreement. The village never took a vote on annexation, which would have required support from a supermajority of the board.

“The politics got too loud too fast,” Chang said.

Looking ahead

In contrast, the local government agreements covering the three data centers under construction in Wisconsin, in Beaver Dam, Mount Pleasant and Port Washington, use tax incremental districts. 

None of them includes the wide-ranging community investments and protections that DeForest negotiated. 

Other communities around the U.S. are negotiating deals similar to DeForest’s. In Pennsylvania, for example, a developer seeking local approval of a data center has offered $165 million, including $10,000 payments to homeowners.

UW-Madison professor Anna Haensch, who researches data center policy, said DeForest’s agreement contains some elements in what are typically contained in more formal “community benefit agreements” — provisions that local governments seek as part of the process of approving a data center. 

She and UW colleagues are working on a framework that local governments could use for negotiations.

“Community benefit agreements are not yet the norm, but I think they should be and I think they will be,” Haensch said.

“When you’re in a tough position in life, knowing what you can ask for is half the battle.”

Guaranteed tax revenue, river funding, affordable housing: What DeForest negotiated before a data center deal collapsed  is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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We Energies reassured shareholders on Wednesday that Oracle’s ongoing dispute with state regulators over new credit rating requirements for data center operators poses no threat to the planned hyperscale data center in Port Washington. 

WEC Energy Group CEO Scott Lauber, head of We Energies’ parent company, told investors during a quarterly earnings call that the Port Washington facility remains on track to come online as soon as late 2027. In a “worst-case scenario” in which Oracle backs out of the project, “there are a lot of opportunities for that site,” Lauber said, “but at this point, I have no indication that’s the case.”

Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) in April approved a rate structure for We Energies’ “very large customers” that requires operators like Oracle to pay for the construction of new power plants needed to meet data center energy needs. But constructing a new plant can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and any unpaid debts tied to the plants could fall on We Energies’ other customers if a data center operator becomes insolvent.

To shield ratepayers from a potential cost shift, the PSC set a AAA- credit rating threshold for data center operators seeking electric service from We Energies. Companies below the threshold must post steep collateral, either in cash or lines of credit, as a backstop.

That requirement could cost Oracle, the co-developer of the Port Washington data center campus alongside OpenAI and Vantage, over $100 million per year in financial security payments. The company held a BBB credit rating when the PSC approved the credit rating standards, largely because of its aggressive borrowing to finance artificial intelligence ventures and risky business relationship with OpenAI. S&P Global Ratings, one of the “Big Three” credit rating agencies responsible for assessing creditworthiness of government and corporate debt, lowered Oracle’s rating to a BBB- on July 9 — the bottom edge of the agency’s “investment-grade” tier. If the company’s credit rating falls further, Lauber said, “we already have all the collateral we need.”

We Energies asked the PSC to reconsider the rule last month, arguing that the added cost could dissuade other companies from operating in Wisconsin. “If the Commission does not reopen its decision on this issue, the implications for Wisconsin would be significant and limit the ability of numerous investment-grade companies to invest in Wisconsin,” the utility’s attorneys wrote in their request. The PSC declined We Energies’ request earlier this month.

Lauber sounded more optimistic about the credit rating requirements on Wednesday. “I don’t think the collateral will be an issue long term,” he said, noting that ratings agencies reacted positively to the credit rating threshold. 

We Energies is currently in talks with at least two other data center operators interested in setting up Wisconsin operations, albeit at far smaller scales than Oracle or Microsoft, which operates a new data center campus in Mount Pleasant. Lauber told shareholders that the credit rating requirements pose no obstacle to those prospective customers. 

Oracle, however, sued the PSC in Ozaukee County Circuit Court last month, asking a judge to “set aside, reverse and remand” the credit rating requirements. The tech giant argues the commission acted outside of its authority in approving the rule and that the AAA- bar isn’t “needed to prevent harm” to We Energies’ other customers.

We Energies is an interested party in that lawsuit, but it did not join Oracle as a plaintiff.

We Energies says Oracle dispute won’t derail Port Washington data center is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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For six months now, Wisconsin Watch has made a concerted effort to report on data centers. We’re publishing major stories at WisconsinWatch.org and, each Monday, we provide data center news nuggets in our Forward newsletter (subscribe here).

Here’s a month-by-month summary of what we’ve reported.

January: Wisconsin Watch revealed that officials in at least four Wisconsin communities (the number has since grown) signed nondisclosure agreements that hid details of billion-dollar data center proposals from the public.

February: We detailed how a $1 billion data center is being proposed for Grant County in the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin.

March: In a sign of the impact of artificial intelligence data centers, we reported that just three Wisconsin companies have done more than $1 billion in business supplying the facilities. We also disclosed more NDAs and other ways local governments have tried to keep data center details secret.

April: We were the first to report on an official estimate that state government will forgo $2 billion in revenue because of a sales tax exemption for data centers that was adopted in 2023.

June: We spent months gathering behind-the-scenes details on what happened to the Driftless Area proposal.

July: We detailed how land sales for the data center under construction in Port Washington turned homeowners and farmers into millionaires and, in some cases, created generation-changing wealth.

More stories are in the works. 

If you have suggestions for future data center coverage, please let me know: tkertscher@wisconsinwatch.org.

The public demanded data center news, and Wisconsin Watch is delivering is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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A major national credit rating agency downgraded Oracle’s rating last week, citing uncertainty about the tech giant’s investments in artificial intelligence. The drop comes just weeks after the company sued Wisconsin’s utility regulator over new credit requirements for data center operators in We Energies territory — a lawsuit spotlighting the company’s financial condition.

S&P Global Ratings, one of the “big three” ratings agencies responsible for assessing the creditworthiness of government and corporate debt, lowered Oracle’s rating from a BBB to a BBB- on July 9. The rating places Oracle on the bottom edge of S&P’s “investment-grade” tier; any additional downgrades will land the company’s credit rating in the “high yield” or “junk” tier. 

“Oracle Corp.’s rapidly expanding AI infrastructure business is increasing its overall credit risk,” S&P analysts wrote in an announcement of the downgrade, pointing to high capital spending, “an uncertain path to profitability” and stiff competition as reasons to be “more cautious” in its approach to AI infrastructure businesses. 

Still, S&P isn’t wholly pessimistic about Oracle’s finances. 

“Despite the stretched leverage and cash-flow profile over the next two years, we expect Oracle to demonstrate consistent improvements toward profitability as capacity comes online and business scales,” the analysts added.

Oracle is co-developing a vast new data center campus in Ozaukee County, and its BBB- credit rating adds a hurdle to its efforts to connect the campus’ servers to the grid.

The reason: new rules for data centers seeking electrical service in We Energies territory. Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) recently approved a rate structure for We Energies’ “very large customers” that requires operators like Oracle to pay for the construction of new power plants needed to meet data center energy needs.

But constructing a new plant can cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and any unpaid debts tied to the plants could fall to We Energies’ other customers if a data center operator becomes insolvent.

To shield ratepayers from a potential cost shift, the PSC set a AAA- credit rating threshold for data center operators seeking electric service from We Energies. Companies below the threshold must post steep collateral, either in cash or lines of credit, as a backstop.

For Oracle, that could mean paying $100 million or more a year as a condition of receiving electric service for Port Washington servers.

We Energies asked the PSC in June to reconsider the credit requirements, arguing that the rule unfairly penalizes Oracle based on an overly cautious reading of the company’s financial health. 

“In practical terms, tens of billions of dollars in Oracle’s value would need to be destroyed before creditors or counterparties, such as Wisconsin Electric and its other customers, could experience losses,” the utility’s lawyers wrote. 

The PSC declined to reconsider the requirements last week.

Oracle sued the commission in Ozaukee County Circuit Court as a backup to the reopener request. The company’s lawsuit asks Judge Sandy Williams to “set aside, reverse, and remand” the credit rating requirements, arguing that they aren’t “needed to prevent harm” to We Energies’ other customers or shareholders. 

In a response filed July 9, the commission accused Oracle of trying to dodge regulatory scrutiny. The company seeks “to overturn over one-hundred years of established caselaw and allow it to dictate one-off preferential terms of service with the utility, bypassing Commission oversight altogether,” commission attorneys wrote.

Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board (CUB) and renewable energy advocacy group Clean Wisconsin also weighed in this week to support the credit ratings requirements. 

“An investment grade credit rating provides little advance warning of financial difficulties that may worsen rapidly,” CUB attorney Daniel Narvey wrote in a position statement filed Monday in Ozaukee County Circuit Court. “If a data center customer suffered financial distress and had not been required to post collateral, (We Energies) and its other customers could be on the hook for billions of dollars of stranded investments.”

Oracle’s stock value has tumbled by more than 25% in the month since it sued the PSC.

Wisconsin isn’t the only state embroiled in a fight over Oracle’s data center operations. In March, Michigan’s Public Service Commission declined to revisit its approval of an electrical service agreement between utility DTE Energy, Oracle and OpenAI. Michigan’s utility regulator approved the contracts in an expedited, uncontested process that drew criticism from ratepayer advocates and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.

Oracle credit rating drops amid Wisconsin fight over data center credit rules is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.