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Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission typically operates far from the spotlight, quietly regulating the utilities most residents only notice when the lights go out. But a wave of proposed energy-intensive data centers in Wisconsin is fueling wider public interest in the agency’s work.

“These are the three most important people in state government that nobody has ever heard of,” said Tom Content, executive director of the state Citizens Utility Board. “They are setting the state’s policy for its energy future.”

With six new data centers planned or under construction in Wisconsin, the commission must now decide how — or whether — Wisconsinites should pay to keep them running. 

Balancing utility and ratepayer interests

The agency — more than a century old and among the first of its kind in the country — oversees Wisconsin’s utilities, both public and investor-owned. It balances two sometimes conflicting goals: the financial stability of utilities, without which the state’s grid could fall into disrepair, and fair treatment of utility customers. The commission’s roughly $39 million budget for the 2027 fiscal year primarily comes from fees paid by utilities, which pass those costs on to their customers.

The PSC isn’t always the decision maker on energy policy. State lawmakers can write rules for utilities for the PSC to enforce. But when state law leaves room for interpretation, the PSC is left to decide.

Most utilities under the PSC’s authority are municipal water and sewer services — the Milwaukee Water Works, for instance.

But many of the PSC’s highest-stakes decisions center on investor-owned utilities. Private gas and electrical utilities don’t compete for customers. As “regulated monopolies,” each is the sole provider in its portion of the state. The PSC acts as the regulator, approving rate hikes, bond issues and major construction projects.

The PSC also approves utilities’ “return on equity” — a profit margin factored into ratepayers’ bills. In Wisconsin, that rate typically runs around 10%.

Powering the data center boom

The PSC lacks a direct say in data center construction. But because data centers demand vast amounts of electricity, it decides how to distribute the costs of new infrastructure needed to power data centers.

The commission approved the construction of We Energies natural gas plants in Oak Creek in Milwaukee County and the town of Paris in Kenosha County in May 2025.

Both plants are part of We Energies’ more than $2 billion plan to expand its natural gas generation capacity to meet surging electricity demand largely driven by data centers. Planned data centers in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington alone are projected to expand service area electricity demand by 40% between 2026 and 2030.

Wisconsin has no precedent for handling such a surge in demand for electricity.

Now the commission is considering a We Energies proposal for a new payment structure for “very large customers” that could set the standard for allocating the costs of building and operating power plants needed to meet data center demands. 

“Our proposed data center rate is considered by many people to be the gold standard, and one that could be a model for what others across the country use,” We Energies spokesperson Brendan Conway wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch.

The Sierra Club is among several advocacy groups involved in the We Energies case as an “intervenor,” meaning it can question the utility and provide expert witnesses. 

“What the PSC requires them to do will likely influence future decisions on large customer rates, which is why it’s so important that we get this right this time around,” said Cassie Steiner, a senior campaign coordinator with the Sierra Club’s Wisconsin chapter. 

The PSC is also weighing an Alliant Energy proposal to establish a payment structure for Meta’s planned data center in Beaver Dam. Some critics argue Alliant Energy should propose a framework covering all data center customers rather than a one-off agreement.

At the heart of the debate: Should Wisconsin’s residential and industrial customers cover any of the costs of powering new data centers?

To answer that question, the PSC holds proceedings in which utilities and intervenors trade questions and answers about the risks and rewards of a utility’s proposal. The commission collects up to $542,000 from utilities to help intervenors pay attorneys and expert witnesses; utilities cover their own expenses. Utility customers ultimately pay for both sides through their electricity bills.

Not all intervenors are critics. Microsoft and data center developer Vantage have intervened in the We Energies case. The proposed payment structure reflects negotiations between the three companies that took place before We Energies filed its case before the PSC. 

Utilities generally work closely with data center developers. Four of Wisconsin’s investor-owned utilities, including We Energies’ parent company, are founding members of the state’s Data Center Coalition, which says it aims “to ensure our state’s significant growth in data center development translates into sustainable economic benefits.” A data center boom is good business for utilities because they earn a return on any new infrastructure they build.

High-demand customers like Microsoft can also intervene and provide key data to inform PSC decisions.

In the We Energies case, details about Microsoft’s projected energy use for its southeast Wisconsin facilities are protected by an order that limits access to the PSC and other parties in the case. 

The PSC needs the data to judge whether proposed arrangements — like granting data centers 100 megawatts of free electricity if they exceed the supply agreed to in their contracts — properly balance the interests of utilities and the public. Microsoft successfully moved to shield that information from public disclosure on the grounds that it could give competitors a window into their operations.

“Load forecasts are sensitive because they give competitors information about our business outlook and investment decisions,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Wisconsin Watch.

Alliant’s one-off payment structure case is subject to even greater access restrictions: Entire pages of the proposed contract between Alliant subsidiary Wisconsin Power and Light and Meta are redacted. 

As the PSC considers the two cases, customers are still being billed in the same manner as  large industrial customers — a payment structure not built for such high electricity demands. Critics of the We Energies proposal agree some alternative is needed.

“They would be better off recognizing that there are some potential harms to other customers even with the proposal they have out there,” said Brett Korte, a staff attorney with the advocacy group Clean Wisconsin.

In written testimony, We Energies Vice President and Treasurer Tony Reese wrote that the new payment structure must leave non-data center customers “no worse off” than under the status quo.

Parties that disagree with a PSC outcome can appeal in court. One such challenge reached the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2005, when the justices upheld the commission’s approval of a coal plant expansion in Oak Creek. 

The commissioners

Unlike state Supreme Court justices, PSC commissioners are not elected. Governors appoint them to staggered six-year terms, subject to Senate confirmation. Gov. Tony Evers appointed all three current commissioners. Chairwoman Summer Strand has served on the commission since 2023; commissioners Kristy Nieto and Marcus Hawkins took their seats in 2024.

The commissioners are supported by a full-time staff of researchers, auditors, attorneys, accountants and a range of other specialists to inform their decisions. Nieto and Hawkins previously worked on the PSC’s staff.

Former commissioners occasionally land jobs with the utilities they once regulated. Six months after stepping down from the PSC in February 2024, commissioner Rebecca Valcq took a job with Alliant Energy — the parent company of Wisconsin Power and Light, which provides electricity for much of central and southern Wisconsin. She became the company’s president in 2025.

Moves like Valcq’s have drawn concerns from watchdogs about utilities’ influence over the agency built to regulate them. Wisconsin law bars ex-commissioners from testifying before the PSC for a year after leaving. State Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, wants to extend that window, proposing a three-year “cooling off period” before ex-commissioners can take executive roles with utilities, enforced by the Wisconsin Ethics Commission. 

“Historically, good-government reforms that rein in the influence of special interests tend to draw bipartisan support,” Nedweski wrote in an email — though she said she hasn’t yet secured any Democratic co-sponsors.

What’s next? 

The PSC is set to hold its next hearing in the We Energies case on Tuesday, with room for residents and interest groups to weigh in.

Hanging over the finer details of the proposal is a larger question: What risks will ratepayers bear if the data center boom later goes bust?

“Of course no company is too big to fail,” Reese wrote last month. “But in the very unlikely event that a customer as massive and financially stable as Microsoft becomes unable to meet its financial obligations,” his company’s proposal promises “adequate protection” to the utility and  customers.

“Making sure our customers aren’t stuck paying data centers’ costs is at the foundation of our customer protection plan,” We Energies spokesman Conway told Wisconsin Watch.

Considering that Wisconsin ratepayers still owe nearly $1 billion on “stranded assets” — power plants that have been shut down due to obsolescence — critics of the data center proposals are skeptical. 

Will the utility’s proposed guardrails hold up in a worst case scenario? That’s now up to the PSC.

Data center boom spotlights Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission. Here’s what the agency does. 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 version of this story was originally published by Circle of Blue.

On a warm fall afternoon, dairy farmer Chris Kestell pushes through prairie brambles taller than himself, tracing a path overgrown with thickets and swarming with bees as he hikes toward a hidden waterway.

Though the route is unidentifiable to the untrained eye, Kestell, 47, has lived here, in the small town of Waldo, Wisconsin, for nearly all his life. His father first walked this path 70 years ago, and his two young boys, 8 and 10 years-old, mark the third generation to follow this practiced journey.

After several minutes, he comes to rest beside a fallen tree. In its petrified tangle of roots, guarded by a tiny plastic gnome, a collection of spoons, bowls, and mugs fit like perfect puzzle pieces. Kestell takes a silver ladle from the snarl and kneels over a wall of dirt, from which a steady trickle emerges.

These are the headwaters of the Milwaukee River, known locally as Nichols Creek. According to Milwaukee Riverkeeper data, it is the “most pristine” monitored waterway in the entire 900 square-mile rivershed, and one of the only regional waters where brook trout reproduce naturally. 

As he has done since he was a young boy, Kestell brings the water to his lips. “By a certain age, everybody drinks here,” he says. “The creek is a landmark for this area. When you’re a kid, you’re like, ‘Wow, this is pretty awesome.’ It’s a special place.”

Deep in this quiet wooded alcove, Nichols Creek is a cultural touchstone and habitat of ecological importance. Safe and secure for generations, residents fear it is suddenly at risk of severe damage from a new era of energy transition in Wisconsin. 

The waterway — along with drinking water wells, protected woods and wetlands, and newly restored floodplains — is caught in the spreading network of high-voltage power lines. 

According to Wisconsin Public Service Commission (PSC) documents, more than 400 miles of new high-voltage power lines are either under review or approved in Wisconsin. Similar projects have also been greenlit in Minnesota, Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and the other three Great Lakes states in recent months, together totaling well over 1,000 miles. 

As part of its Plymouth Reliability Project, the American Transmission Company (ATC), a local electric utility, plans to install seven miles of high-capacity lines through the Waldo area. Part of the route would pass directly over Nichols Creek, raising concerns over deforestation around the county’s only stream designated as “outstanding” by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

Meanwhile, a second ATC expansion, the Ozaukee County Distribution Interconnection project, proposes the construction of five new energy substations and corresponding transmission lines just southeast of Waldo. The preferred route would require the clear-cutting of old-growth forest and intersect the Cederberg Bog Wilderness — “the most intact large bogs in southeastern Wisconsin,” according to the Wisconsin DNR, and a registered National Natural Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior.

“Our entire business is based on people coming away from the city and spending the weekend here in the trees,” said Katy Rowe, who co-owns Abloom Farms, a resort and wedding venue located on the northern edge of the bog. “Eminent domain should not be used as a weapon against normal American citizens that have decided to live a quiet life in the country.”

According to ATC’s website, these projects are “needed to ensure electric reliability and address current and future energy needs in the community and the surrounding area.” But those needs aren’t due from the smattering of dairy farms, lonely county roads, and modest old homes that comprise rural Waldo, population 467. 

Nearly two dozen data centers in southeastern Wisconsin alone are either proposed, built, or in-development, but the two newest are not like the others. More than 20 miles away, in the city of Port Washington, a 672-acre campus built by Vantage Data Centers broke ground on Dec. 17. Even farther, some 70 miles south, Microsoft is building a 315-acre facility near Racine. 

Though seemingly far enough away to be irrelevant to Waldo, the new sites’ thirst for power knows few bounds. When fully built, the Vantage and Microsoft locations will together require a 24/7 electricity supply totaling 3.2 gigawatts — greater than all of Wisconsin’s homes combined. 

Power generated by natural gas, nuclear, coal, solar, wind, and battery storage stations across the state’s central and eastern regions are all in the mix to bring data center campuses online. Transmission lines, running through Waldo, will transport the electricity they demand.

When reached, ATC declined to comment on the Plymouth Reliability project.

But the company in public testimony has downplayed the project’s potential effects on wetlands and says it will take measures to minimize the impact. 

The project as proposed “will not directly impact stream channels or have direct discharges to streams,” Erika Biemann, senior environmental project manager for ATC, wrote in testimony before Wisconsin’s PSC.

Waldo’s story is not a one-off. New state and federal legislation are incentivizing data center development and encouraging power lines’ rapid rise across the region, potentially running roughshod over other communities. 

In February, Illinois — which by one count leads the Great Lakes region with more than 200 data centers — enacted a law allowing tax incentives for the construction of new battery storage facilities and high-voltage transmission lines. A month later, lawmakers in Indiana (75 data centers) enacted a law aiming to make transmission lines more efficient and cost-effective to construct. Similar legislation went into effect in Ohio (192 data centers) in August.

On a national scale, President Trump signed an executive order this January declaring an energy emergency and ordering agencies to “expedite the completion of all authorized and appropriated” energy infrastructure. The order directs the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to speed up their review of permit applications to develop wetlands for transmission lines and other energy projects. The Corps is reviewing such permits for new lines in Wisconsin and other states. 

In late October, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to change permitting and rulemaking procedures to “significantly reduce” the amount of time and oversight required to bring data centers onto the grid. 

Literally caught in the middle of a new epoch of surging energy demand and supply in the Great Lakes region, residents say they are contending with powerful economic trends that could be devastating to the environment, and already are weighing on their spirits. 

Back at his family home, Kestell points to a large rock on his front lawn. The new power lines, Kestell said, would run right over his uncle’s final resting place.

“This is not rural electrification anymore, bringing power to poor farms” said Kestell’s father, Tom, also a farmer in Waldo. “This is an elite, wealthy class of people who are invested in these power stations and data centers, who are going to make probably trillions of dollars off this. And the people who they infringe on in the meantime? They’re just collateral damage.”

Homes and ponds face risk

What’s developing in Waldo is a case in point. The wetland area through which Nichols Creek flows is the source of local residents’ well water. 

“Water comes, goes back down into the ground, and then becomes a collection of underground springs,” said JoAnne Friedman, the town chairperson of Lyndon, Wisconsin. “When you try to imagine how much water is underground here, it is a phenomenal amount.”

The water recharge process, and the natural filtration trees and other plants provide, is threatened by the right-of-way easements that the 138-kilovolt power lines require. All vegetation between 60 feet and 110 feet to either side of the lines would need to be cleared during their construction. 

The loss of maple and cedar tree cover, Kestell said, threatens both the warming of Nichols Creek and soil erosion on the side of county roads that already slump and flood when storms roll through. 

“With all of these projects, they don’t realize how much mitigation people who have these properties have done to prevent erosion,” said Friedman, who has needed to enlarge her property’s 20-foot-deep retention pond from half an acre to two acres to manage gushing ephemeral streams during springtime snowmelt and heavy rains. 

Living at the bottom of a small sloped valley, she said she has planted so many trees she “lost count,” all to help redirect flows from damaging her home. If ATC’s transmission line route is built, she said, this cover would all be clear-cut. 

Hundred-year-old trees would also be razed from the backyard of Randy Pietsch, a retired dairy farmer who has lived along the banks of Nichols Creek for more than 50 years. The trout pond he keeps on his property has long been open to friends and family for fishing, though he closed it several years ago and has no plans now of reopening. 

“I’m not hopeful for anything,” he said. “Why they have to come through here is beyond me. I can’t imagine that electric line’s good for fish. They just want to steal the land, that’s all. It’s sad, it’s stressful. You lose a lot of sleep at night.”

ATC says the project will not significantly affect the creek. 

“The loss of forested riparian habitat along Nicholas Creek would not be significant, especially considering the large riparian forest buffer both upstream and downstream from the proposed route crossing,” Biemann, the ATC environmental project manager, wrote in public testimony. 

Olivia Poelmann, a PSC environmental analysis and review specialist, testified that the project’s cumulative environmental effects are “not expected to be significant and are mostly temporary, with a large majority of impacts occurring primarily during the construction phase of the project.” 

But most startling, residents say, are the effects of ATC’s preferred route on their properties, many of which have been in their families for multiple generations. 

In some cases, the transmission lines’ right-of-way easements extend several feet inside peoples’ homes. One resident, Nolan Harp, said that the lines would run within 40 feet of his front door, placing half of his house within an easement. As a result, five 40-foot tall trees in his yard would be cut down, and his private well would need to be moved.

“That’s my sole source of water. It’s an old well, but it works, it’s clean, and it’s good,” Harp said. “But you can’t have something like that under power lines.”

Harp said that ATC has offered to dig up the open well, its casing, tank, and pump, and replace them elsewhere on his property. But the headache of additional construction, and the obvious hazard of power lines running above his house, has him considering other options.

“I don’t want to move, but if they insist on putting that power line up, I don’t think I can live here,” Harp said.

In late January, the $33.5 million Plymouth project was approved by the PSC, though it added a condition that prevents ATC from using eminent domain to build their power lines. ATC subsequently petitioned to reopen the application on the grounds that PSC cannot revoke that right, which is protected under Wisconsin state law. In April, this petition was granted. 

Kestell, who founded an organization called Neighbors 4 Neighbors to fight against the project in court, estimates that residents have spent $250,000 of their own money on legal fees.

At the end of the day, their homes and health are the most important concerns. 

“When they put these towers in, some of them are going down 30 or 40 feet, possibly hitting the aquifer when they’re digging foundations,” said Kestell, who estimates his own front door will be within roughly 20 feet of an easement. “We’re just not sure about contamination.”

Wisconsin Watch contributed reporting.

As data centers boom, rural Waldo braces for high-voltage lines over wetlands and homes 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.