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A coalition of electrical utilities, including two major players in Wisconsin’s power supply, is seeking federal intervention to pause competitive bidding for transmission projects needed to meet the vast energy needs of the data center boom.

The coalition filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on Tuesday asking the agency to exempt at least some major grid upgrades from bidding, arguing “bureaucratic red tape” can tack months onto project timelines and strain the country’s ability to “achieve dominance” in artificial intelligence. 

“This complaint is about whether our country will seize, or squander, a generational chance to own the next century,” the utilities wrote.

Among the companies behind the complaint are Xcel Energy, owner of Northern States Power Company-Wisconsin, and American Transmission Company (ATC), which owns and operates transmission lines across much of Wisconsin. 

National and statewide ratepayer advocacy groups reacted with alarm, casting the utilities’ request as a recipe for higher electricity bills. 

“Utilities rushing to catch a ride on the AI investment gold rush need to slow down and think about the impact their proposals are having,” wrote Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board Executive Director Tom Content, as customers “wake up like Groundhog Day to rate hikes well above the cost of living.”

The complaint and the pushback it prompted mark the latest phase in a long-standing fight over the benefits of opening the transmission market to competition.

Stiff competition

FERC first introduced competitive bidding for regional transmission projects in 2011 after ratepayer advocates lobbied for change, arguing that the earlier process — allowing local monopolies to control all projects within their territories — all but guaranteed inflated costs.

The shift set off a race between developers angling for a piece of the action. When a developer wins a transmission project, it also picks up a new revenue stream: Regulators pre-approve developers’ “return on equity,” or profit on each dollar invested.

Dozens of developers have lined up to bid since the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), a nonprofit that manages the wholesale electricity market and grid for much of the Midwest, approved more than $10 billion in new transmission projects in 2022. A new round of projects approved in December 2024 added about $22 billion to the total, and the list of prospective bidders grew once again.

Some are local utilities hoping to maintain control of their territory; others are powerful national utilities venturing outside of their turf, international developers wading into the U.S. market, and startup transmission developers backed by private equity firms.  

While the data center rush had already begun in the Midwest by the time MISO approved the latest set of transmission projects in 2024, the approved projects often couldn’t account for the scale and breakneck pace of the data center developments that emerged in the region soon after. With the boom now in full swing, the tenor of competition for transmission projects is changing.

Debate over bidding benefits 

MISO, which is also responsible for picking a developer for each project, has favored lower-cost bids with more substantial “cost containment” measures designed to shield customers from budget overruns. Ratepayer advocates say the lower bids are proof the bidding requirements are working, pushing even major national utilities to underbid competitors.

In their complaint to FERC, the coalition of utilities — which calls itself the “Grid Acceleration Coalition” — argued the benefits of competition are “unproven.” 

Projects entirely within one utility’s territory aren’t subject to competitive bidding; those projects routinely exceed initial budgets by millions of dollars. While cheaper bids tend to win competitive projects, the utility group argued that even those projects aren’t immune to budget overruns.

But the core of the utilities’ case is about time, not money. They argue the bidding process adds months to project timelines without clear benefits.

In their view, those delays harm customers, in part by slowing the construction of transmission lines that could expand access to cheaper electricity and prevent blackouts, and pose national security risks. 

“These projects — expressways for power — are as critical to meeting today’s challenges as the Eisenhower interstate highway system was to prevailing in the Cold War,” the coalition argued in its complaint. “China has devoted itself to overtaking America as the world’s AI leader and is just months behind.”

The utilities pointed to a recent example in Wisconsin: Last month, MISO reversed its decision to award three substations in Fond du Lac, Ozaukee and Sheboygan counties to private-equity-backed startup Viridon, instead handing the projects to ATC. 

ATC’s initial bid was more expensive than Viridon’s, but the company successfully argued it alone could build the substations in time to serve the nearby Vantage data center campus in Port Washington. 

MISO’s initial plans set a goal to complete the substations by 2033; the Port Washington data center plans to come online in early 2028. Though ATC emerged victorious, it told FERC that the 15-month delay between MISO’s initial approval of the substations and the reversal was “completely unnecessary.”

Ratepayer advocates and other observers, however, quickly pointed out that even noncompetitive projects run into delays. ATC’s Cardinal-Hickory Creek transmission line in southwest Wisconsin, for instance, came online in 2024 — more than a decade after MISO approved it — following prolonged legal battles with conservation groups. 

“All developers can experience construction delays,” said Claire Wayner, a senior associate with the clean energy nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute. “It’s not like there’s a silver bullet.”

Opponents also underscored that two competitively bid projects in the Southwest met their in-service date goals last year. 

“Competitive transmission projects have been shown to have a better track record of adhering to cost containment and completion schedules than noncompetitive projects,” said Paul Cicio, chair of the national Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition. “A moratorium would move us backward at precisely the wrong time.”

The back-and-forth over the merits of competition is nothing new, Wayner noted. “The tricky thing with transmission competition is that there are stories of projects from both sides of the aisle that support their positions.” 

The push to pause competition

The utility group proposed two options to FERC: Allow MISO and a Southwestern regional grid operator to exempt projects from competitive bidding on a case-by-case basis or suspend competition entirely for the next five years — “a period pegged to when our country must begin building the infrastructure that will decide which nation wins the AI race.”

The utilities added that they don’t intend to “claw back” other projects already awarded or interrupt ongoing bidding processes.

During that five-year period, national forecasts estimate data center electricity demand could reach up to 25% of the country’s total energy use. MISO alone projects that it may need to double its current pace of generation growth to avoid shortfalls in the near future.

MISO’s territory, stretching from the Upper Midwest to Louisiana, has seen by far the most dramatic increase in data center capacity since 2020 relative to other regional grid networks.

The right of first refusal fight

After FERC introduced competitive bidding in 2011, utility groups turned to state legislatures. The result: right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) laws that give established local utilities first dibs on transmission projects in their territories, including those planned by regional grid operators like MISO.

Utilities prevailed in Minnesota and Michigan; Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down its ROFR law in 2023 after a national transmission developer challenged its constitutionality, and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker vetoed an ROFR bill the same year.

But similar efforts have failed in Wisconsin. State lawmakers have consistently rejected ROFR proposals, including a 2025 bill sponsored by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

Wisconsin ratepayer advocates see the FERC complaint as a work-around. “It is another effort by the utilities to defeat competition,” Todd Stuart, executive director of the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group, wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. “When they lose in state legislatures and then lose out on competitive bids,” he added, “they go back to FERC.”

In the utilities’ complaint, Xcel Energy cited Wisconsin’s lack of an ROFR law, and the resulting bidding process for projects in the state, as posing a risk of delaying upgrades needed to serve a data center across the border in Minnesota. 

The company wouldn’t comment about the parallels between the options utilities suggested in the FERC complaint and ROFR laws. Instead, spokesman Kevin Coss pointed to permitting reforms in Minnesota — a 2024 law streamlining permitting for clean energy projects — as another example of the company’s efforts to “speed the buildout of critical infrastructure across our systems.” Xcel did not bid on any of the competitive projects in Wisconsin.

In a statement to Wisconsin Watch, ATC argued the options its coalition suggested to FERC “would not operate as a substitute” for an ROFR law, “even temporarily or on a case-by-case basis.”

Buildout costs fall to ratepayers

Regardless of who builds a transmission line, ratepayers cover the construction and maintenance costs through their electricity bills. We Energies estimates that transmission-related costs account for about 10% of customers’ bills. 

Customers across the Upper Midwest share the costs of MISO-designed projects across multiple states, spreading costs among a larger number of ratepayers.

But billing practices vary. In some cases, utilities can only bill ratepayers for the costs of building a transmission project after it comes online. When ATC builds a transmission line, FERC allows the developer to begin billing customers while the line is still under construction.

ATC says this approach saves customers money in the long term by reducing interest on construction costs.
Ratepayer advocates see it differently. “Consumers are paying for projects without receiving the benefits,” Cicio said. Transmission projects take years to complete, and short-term increases in monthly electricity bills don’t square well with concerns about affordability and the risk of stranded assets if the AI boom goes bust.

Adding to the frustration: a planned 9.2% electricity rate increase for We Energies customers in eastern Wisconsin over the next two years. That rate hike in part reflects the addition of generators, including new natural gas plants in Milwaukee and Kenosha counties, needed to meet data center demands.

Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission will soon decide how to divvy up costs of powering We Energies-served data centers — a decision that could set a statewide precedent.

Utilities seek federal pause on grid bidding amid AI-driven power demand 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.

Lawmakers have given final approval to a moratorium on data centers larger than 20 megawatts — the first statewide ban of its kind in the country.

“What we’re talking about here is an ability for us to absorb and understand the impact of data centers potentially on the State of Maine,” Sen. Mark Lawrence (D-York) said Wednesday ahead of the Senate vote. “The states that have had data centers come in have had tremendous impacts.”

The bill, LD 307, bans data centers larger than 20 megawatts until November, 2027. It also creates the Maine Data Center Coordination Council, and instructs the council to provide strategic input, facilitate planning considerations and evaluate policy tools to address data center opportunities.

“We’ve seen across the U.S. the rapid expansion of AI data centers, with few to no safeguards to insulate people from shocks to electricity demand, impacts to local water supplies, and more,” Maine Conservation Voters said in a statement. “LD 307 will help protect Maine people and the environment, pushing pause on large-scale data centers to ensure strategic and strong policies and protections are in place first.”

The bill was passed in both chambers this week, and is now awaiting funding on the special appropriations table.

“My point here is not that data centers should never happen,” said Sen. Nicole Grohoski (D-Hancock) Wednesday. “The point is we do not have the correct regulatory regime on the books to ensure that a decision like this isn’t neutral, at a minimum, or positive for everyone that would be affected by that decision.”

Discussion in both the Senate and Maine House of Representatives focused on the impact on proposed data center projects, primarily one in Jay and another in Sanford. Lawmakers volleyed back and forth on the potential benefits to a former mill town like Jay, and possible negative impacts to the surrounding areas. They also considered an amendment that would have created an exemption process to the moratorium that was ultimately rejected by both chambers.

“I’m not going to support something that doesn’t support business, the expansion of business in the State of Maine, especially in a community that’s dying for commerce and to get back on its feet,” said Sen. Jeff Timberlake (R-Androscoggin).

Republican lawmakers also raised concerns that Maine would lose out on economic opportunities, but would still feel the negative impacts when the data centers are built in other states.

“These projects are going to happen whether or not we pass this moratorium,” said Sen. Matt Harrington (R-York). “For those who care about the environment, they will be built in states that use 70% coal power, and we will be the tailpipe for that. These data centers will be built in groves in states that don’t have an economic death wish, and we will receive all the negative environmental impacts of that.”

Rep. Steven Foster (R-Dexter) said in March that any data centers are already subject to environmental and local regulations.

“This moratorium is not needed here in the state of Maine,” Foster said. “A lot of fear has been stoked up about an AI data center being built anywhere in Maine, which is contrary to reality. We would not see the facilities here the size of those being built in other states.”

But Democrats countered that Maine residents can’t afford the potential costs from the projects.

“We’re already seeing a tremendous impact from rising gas prices, rising oil prices, and how that feeds into also rising electric energy prices,” Lawrence said. “We don’t need to add an additional risk on energy costs for Mainers when we have time to reflect on this, study this and do this right.”

Grohoski also pointed to the local opposition to data centers, and said if the state doesn’t take the time to build intentional regulations, residents may just continue to stop projects at the local level.

“So I think if we do think that Maine is a place where we would like data centers at some point, if we don’t figure out how to do it right, they’re not going to happen anyhow, because people are concerned that we have not done our jobs to protect them,” Grohoski said.

In March, Rep. Melanie Sachs (D-Freeport) argued that the moratorium is not against innovation.

“Maine has always been a place that embraces new industries and new ideas, but we are also a state that understands the value of stewardship of our land, our water, our communities and our long-term future,” she said.

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A possible billion-dollar data center in southwest Wisconsin’s Driftless Area would be built without any tax incentives and would produce more than $5 million annually in property tax revenue, according to a local economic development official involved in the discussions.

Ron Brisbois, executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Corp., also told Wisconsin Watch he expects to learn this month whether a developer chooses Grant County over sites in Indiana and North Dakota.

Asked if progress has been made, Brisbois said: “I’ll use the word ‘promising’ because I’m about fostering economic development, and I see this project for being a quality project. So, yes, I think it looks promising, from my perspective.”

When the proposal first gained attention in February, Brisbois said little more than the data center is expected to be worth $1 billion. He is now offering more details:

Scope: The facility would cost $1 billion to $2 billion, span about 500 acres and employ about 50 people.

Tax breaks: Local governments would not have to provide any tax incentives, such as a tax incremental district — a common development tool that delays when municipalities and school districts receive additional property tax revenue from a project.

Tax revenue: Brisbois said his “conservative estimate” is that the data center would pay $5.6 million annually in property tax revenue to local governments and school districts.

Brisbois has refused to identify the company that is scouting sites, but said the data center would be run by one of the major tech companies. “People will recognize the name,” he said.

Brisbois would not identify the part of Grant County being considered, other than to say it’s near power transmission lines.

But talks have taken place with officials in the town of Cassville, population 400, where opposition has emerged.

Cassville town residents voted 54-3 last month to authorize “village powers.” The move is aimed at giving the township more control over matters such as zoning. It was sought by residents who want more control over any data center proposal.

The “No Data Centers in the Driftless” Facebook page has 2,700 members.

One of the Facebook group’s leaders, Grant County resident Pete Moris, said he was pleased that more information is being released but wants more.

“The more transparency we can have on this project, the better,” he said.

“If we’re going to embark on the largest project ever developed in Grant County, it would sure be nice for citizens to know who we’re inviting into our county.”

The use of a tax incremental district for a $15 billion data center under construction in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee, spurred backlash. 

Data center opponents pushed a referendum that will be on ballots next Tuesday. If approved, the city would have to get referendum approval to create any tax incremental district worth over $10 million. The city created a $175 million TIF district for the data center.

Hyperscale data centers are also under construction in Mount Pleasant, south of Milwaukee, and in Beaver Dam.

New details emerge on possible data center in Wisconsin’s Driftless Area 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.

About 100 Wisconsinites joined a virtual town hall hosted by Citizen Action of Wisconsin Wednesday evening to share how data center developments across the state are harming local residents through the increased use of energy. 

Over the past year, data centers have become an increasingly potent issue in the state as the number of data center facilities in Wisconsin has risen to about 50. Data center proposals are currently pending in communities including Beaver Dam and Janesville. The Democratic and Republican candidates for governor have frequently been asked about the issue and lawmakers of both parties introduced legislation to manage data center growth — yet both chambers of the Legislature adjourned for the year without the bills being signed into law. 

The Legislature’s lack of action, and the 10 month wait before the body is back in session in January 2027, was a big concern for data center opponents at the event Wednesday who are worried about how many data center projects can be planned and started before then. 

“These are happening fast. A lot of these decisions are being made in the next six to 18 months, which is especially concerning because, as mentioned earlier, the state Legislature went home on a 10 month long vacation without helping us with many of these important decisions,” Kat Klawes, Citizen Action of Wisconsin’s climate policy coordinator, said. “There are data centers and power plants being built 24/7, so there are people out at construction sites across the state, still working late at night. And there’s local projects that are being approved.

“And this is a big issue, because Wisconsin does not have a statewide plan,” Klawes said “These projects are being approved on a case-by-case basis. Local towns are coming up against billion dollar companies and teams of lawyers who are demanding things. There’s no consistent framework for cost, water use, energy demand, community impact or community say. There is none of that. Wisconsin is the wild, wild west.”

Among the biggest concerns shared by attendees were the pressure that data centers’ massive energy use will put on regular Wisconsinites’ energy bills and the effect that increased energy use will have on the climate. 

Keviea Guiden, who works on energy burden issues on Milwaukee’s north side, noted that Wisconsin is two weeks away from the end of the winter moratorium on utilities shutting off people’s power. She said that with so many Wisconsin families already struggling to pay their bills, the state needs to do something to prevent data centers from further increasing the cost of energy. 

“We will be burdened with having to pay for those facilities being built,” she said. “Families are already being forced between if they should pay for health care, day cares, diapers, if they should figure out if the dog could even eat as well.” 

Attendees complained about the large amount of water data centers use to cool their systems and the effect that could have on local water supplies — especially the Great Lakes. But the bigger climate concern is the emissions caused by increasing the amount of electricity Wisconsin’s utility companies generate. Green Bay resident Arden Kozlow connected the fight against data centers to the fight against oil pipelines such as the activism against the Line 5 pipeline across northern Wisconsin. 

“We’re just fast tracking a process that is already happening with absolutely no regulation and no care for how it’s happening, and that, frankly, this only adds to the problem that we’ve already had with oil pipelines,” Kozlow said. “So it’s all just sort of feeding into itself and creating a bigger and bigger problem.”

Attendees still suggested a number of statewide solutions for managing the effects of data centers. 

One proposal is capping the state’s utility rates at 2% of household income, which advocates said would encourage the state’s utilities to invest in lower cost renewable energy. Attendees also supported legislation proposed by Democratic lawmakers that would put a moratorium on data center construction until many of the questions about their impacts can be answered.

State Rep. Angelito Tenorio (D-West Allis) joined the town hall to tout his proposed legislation that would require Wisconsin get 100% of its energy from carbon free sources by 2050. 

“We have a moral imperative to move towards clean energy, renewable energy,” he said, noting that Wisconsin lags behind its neighbors in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota on the issue. 

With the Legislature out for the year, local government approvals will remain the only lever Wisconsin residents have to push back against data center developments.

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Click here to read highlights from the story

• A big shift in Wisconsin’s power grid fight: The regional grid operator pulled a key project from a Blackstone-backed developer and gave it to ATC — the latest twist in who gets to build (and profit from) the data center boom.

• Surging power demand is fueling billions in grid upgrades and intensifying competition between utilities and investors. The data center boom has amped up demand and competition even further. Ratepayers will ultimately cover the costs through their utility bills.

• The decision isn’t final. Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission still has to weigh in.

The Midwest’s data center boom requires a vast electrical transmission buildout to keep servers online, and transmission developers are clamoring for a share of the action.

An example of that tug-of-war played out last week, when the regional grid operator for much of the Upper Midwest reversed its earlier decision to allow a developer backed by the investment firm Blackstone to build a series of substations in eastern Wisconsin.

Instead, the operator handed the substations to the American Transmission Company (ATC), which owns and operates most transmission lines in eastern and central Wisconsin. The company argues it’s better-positioned to complete the project before a new Port Washington data center comes online by early 2028, five years ahead of the transmission project’s original deadline.

The about-face is a win for Wisconsin’s largest transmission developer after a series of losses in Wisconsin’s Assembly, where lawmakers have repeatedly rejected a proposal to give regionally established developers like ATC a monopoly over portions of multistate transmission projects within Wisconsin, leaving the door open for competition. 

The new arrangement itself likely won’t drive up costs for Wisconsin ratepayers. But ATC will now fold the substations into a larger $1.3 billion buildout to serve the Port Washington campus — another phase in the ongoing fight over who will pay to supply power for new data centers.

How the Midwest’s grid is planned and paid for

The North American grid is an ever-evolving network of transmission lines and substations that carry electricity from generators to customers.

In much of the country, nonprofit “independent system operators” coordinate regional power grids, managing a wholesale electricity market and interstate transmission projects. Wisconsin is within the territory of the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), which spans from the Upper Midwest to Louisiana. 

MISO has approved roughly $32 billion in transmission upgrades for the Upper Midwest since 2022, including new “backbone” power lines capable of carrying a higher voltage than existing lines in the region.

Among the latest round of projects: a series of transmission lines and substations in eastern Wisconsin. 

Just months after MISO’s board approved the eastern Wisconsin buildout in 2024, Port Washington’s city council approved a $15 billion data center on the city’s northern edge. Three new substations outlined in MISO’s plans are within easy reach of the campus.

Blackstone-backed developer takes the lead

Four transmission developers bid on the eastern Wisconsin upgrades, including ATC, which submitted a joint bid with Dairyland Power Cooperative and the nonprofit WPPI Energy, owned by municipal utilities in Wisconsin, Iowa and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

MISO initially awarded the project to Viridon, owned by Blackstone Energy Transition Partners — a private equity fund under the umbrella of Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset management firm.

Viridon’s roughly $350 million bid was by far the lowest — just over half of MISO’s estimate and more than $100 million below the next-cheapest bid. In its January announcement, MISO acknowledged the budget “may not be achievable” but cited Viridon’s promises to limit cost overruns and profits as reasons to pick the company over its competitors. 

Who pays for transmission depends on who builds it

When MISO awards a long-range transmission project, the developer spreads costs across customers in multiple states, meaning each customer pays less.

When a developer plans a transmission project within its own territory, that developer’s customers bear the costs alone.

Transmission developers pass costs along to customers through electrical utility bills. We Energies, for instance, estimates that transmission-related costs account for about 10% of customers’ bills. 

Those fees include a “return on equity” for shareholders: profits generated for each dollar invested. As of 2025, ATC collects a 10.48% return.

Competitive bidding for multistate projects is relatively new. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which oversees regional grid operators like MISO, began requiring competitive bidding for regional projects in 2011, following criticism that monopoly developers were driving up ratepayer costs. 

Competition for Midwestern projects escalated after MISO’s board approved billions of dollars in grid upgrades in 2022. MISO was “ahead of the game in terms of how much regional transmission it was planning” compared to other regional grid operators, said Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School.

Grid expansion draws new competitors and investors

MISO’s transmission buildout plans offered utilities a golden opportunity to pick up new, dependable revenue streams. “I would have said generational,” Peskoe said, “but then we have the data center rush starting shortly thereafter.” 

Dozens of utilities, including some of the nation’s largest, have since lined up to bid for MISO transmission projects.

Also competing for a share of the buildout: newly formed developers financed by powerful investment firms.

Blackstone sponsored Viridon’s launch in 2023, and the new developer soon threw its hat into the ring for Midwestern transmission projects. Stonepeak, a smaller private equity firm, entered in 2025, backing startup developer Longview Infrastructure.

Well-established utilities have their own ties to multinational investment firms. 

As of December 2025, investment giants BlackRock and the Vanguard Group both owned more than 10% of shares in Wisconsin’s four largest investor-owned utility companies: Wisconsin Electric Power Company, Xcel Energy, Alliant Energy and Madison Gas and Electric Company. 

State Street, another powerful investment firm, owns more than 5% of shares in each utility. 

The four major utilities collectively own a majority of ATC.

Duluth-based utility ALLETE, also an ATC investor, belongs to the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. The board’s purchase of ALLETE last year gave more than 22 million Canadians a chance to shore up their retirement savings through the Midwest’s grid buildout. 

A fight over competition

ATC and its peers have criticized competitive bidding from the outset. As MISO set up the new bidding process, Peskoe said, utilities fought the change in federal court and urged state legislatures to pass right-of-first-refusal (ROFR) laws.

ROFR laws give local utilities first dibs on transmission projects within their territory, including those planned by regional grid operators. 

In the view of Wisconsin’s utilities, ROFR laws ensure that utilities with local experience lead transmission projects, avoiding delays and missteps newcomers might face. “Out-of-state single-project developers lack local connection,” an ATC spokesperson wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch. “We maintain relationships with our regulators that go beyond a single project.” 

But a coalition of critics, including many Midwestern ratepayer advocacy groups, argue that ROFR laws drive up consumer costs by stifling competition and preserving local monopolies. “We firmly believe that competitive bidding makes sense,” said Tom Content, executive director of Wisconsin’s Citizens Utility Board.

MISO has favored lower-cost bids thus far, but ATC argues that celebrating the cost savings from competitive bidding is premature. “Evidence of a low bid is not evidence of cost savings,” the company spokesperson wrote, because bid prices often do not match final project cost. Substantial overruns are common, even in projects without competitive bidding.

The two sides have battled in state legislatures and courts across the Midwest for more than a decade. Utilities prevailed in Minnesota and Michigan; Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down a ROFR law in 2023 after a national developer challenged its constitutionality.

Despite extensive lobbying, ROFR bills have repeatedly failed in Wisconsin’s Assembly, including one introduced in 2025 by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

That leaves ATC to compete for the MISO-planned transmission upgrades, including the plans for eastern Wisconsin.

Data center complicates planning

Shortly after MISO began soliciting bids for the project in February 2025, ATC alerted the grid operator to a complication. The Port Washington data center would need to connect to the grid by the end of 2027, and ATC would be responsible for making the plug-in possible with new substations designed to support the campus’ vast energy needs.

ATC jointly bid on MISO’s eastern Wisconsin grid upgrades in July 2025.

Two months later, the company filed an application with Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) to build substations and transmission lines to serve the new data center campus. ATC projected a price tag of at least $1.3 billion for its broader project, which includes infrastructure not in MISO’s reliability-focused plan for eastern Wisconsin. Both proposals called for three substations — albeit at different scales, on different timelines and for different purposes — in roughly the same locations. 

From ATC’s perspective, at least one set of substations would need to be built in time for the Port Washington data center’s opening day. If MISO awarded its project to ATC, the company could address regional grid reliability concerns and serve the data center in one fell swoop, spreading some costs across the Upper Midwest to ease ratepayer burdens. Even if MISO didn’t award the project to ATC, the utility said it would still seek state approval to build the necessary substations. 

But others saw the overlap as an attempt to sidestep competition.

“We have concerns that attempts are being made to circumvent competitive bidding,” Content said.

MISO soon raised concerns of its own with the Wisconsin PSC. In early January, the grid operator argued that ATC was effectively applying to build the “same substations” as those outlined in its own eastern Wisconsin project. Because MISO had not yet selected a winning bidder for its transmission upgrades, it urged regulators to “consider this uncertainty” before allowing ATC to move forward.

After MISO selected its bid, Viridon also raised objections.

“Put simply, if ATC constructs the substations, Viridon cannot, and ATC will have circumvented MISO’s planning processes,” the developer’s attorneys wrote in a motion filed with the PSC. Allowing ATC to build the substations, they added, would prevent costs from being distributed across multiple states, “potentially requir(ing) Wisconsin customers to pay more.”

ATC pushed back, arguing the projects serve different purposes. The project MISO envisioned aims to improve regional grid reliability and did not require a rapid turnaround, ATC attorney Amy Miller wrote in filings with the PSC. The project under consideration by the PSC, on the other hand, was tied to a specific customer with a firm deadline.

ATC emphasized that Viridon is not yet certified as a public utility in Wisconsin — a process that could take a year or more. That timeline, ATC argued, makes it impossible for Viridon to complete the substations in time. “MISO cannot cause Wisconsin customers to go without timely access to power,” Miller wrote.

Vantage Data Centers echoed the urgency, telling regulators it had “a considerable amount to lose” if the substations aren’t ready by the time the Port Washington campus opens.

MISO changes course — benefiting ATC

Behind the scenes, the timeline began to shift.

Shortly before filing its PSC application last fall, ATC asked MISO to expedite a review of its eastern Wisconsin upgrades in light of the data center’s plans.

MISO adjusted its schedule in February, setting a new in-service date of Dec. 1, 2027. Viridon submitted a plan to meet that deadline, Jeff Dodd, president of Viridon’s Midwestern subsidiary, told Wisconsin Watch.

The grid operator wasn’t persuaded. 

In a revision released quietly on Thursday, MISO reassigned the substations to ATC, noting its “uncertainty” that Viridon could clear administrative hurdles in time. 

The reassignment is a first for MISO. The grid operator has previously worked with developers to update plans when problems arose, with the exception of a 2023 case in which MISO canceled a project because of Texas’ right of first refusal law. 

Viridon retains a fraction of MISO’s original project: a set of transmission lines and one substation scheduled for completion by 2033. 

Under the new arrangement, Midwestern customers will collectively cover the costs of Viridon’s project and about $40 million of ATC’s substation upgrades. 

The regional cost sharing of the substations is a small relief for ratepayer advocates. ATC now plans to fold the substations into the larger grid buildout it brought to the PSC last September, which includes transmission lines needed to serve the Port Washington data center. Wisconsin ratepayers alone are set to cover the remainder of the project’s more than $1 billion budget. 

“Now that the dispute over ownership of the substations is resolved,” Content wrote in an email to Wisconsin Watch, “our overriding concern is over the costs of the transmission line itself that ATC has proposed. Critical changes are needed to prevent utility customers across Wisconsin as well as customers in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from footing the bill for this project and other data center-feeding power lines that should be paid for by the tech companies.”

The final outcome for the Wisconsin transmission projects still hinges on state regulators. Neither Viridon nor ATC can begin construction on their respective substations or transmission lines without approval from the PSC. The commission is reviewing ATC’s application and weighing where the infrastructure will be built.

For now, construction crews are racing to bring the Port Washington data center online by the end of next year. The PSC will soon decide who pays for the power to run it.

Competition intensifies over who builds Wisconsin’s grid as data centers drive power demand 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 announced last week it would stop signing nondisclosure agreements that keep its data center proposals secret, a move that received praise from open government advocates.

Less attention was paid to the other party to those NDAs: local governments.

“Hopefully, the industry follows,” said Wisconsin state Rep. Clint Moses, R-Menomonie, where the city signed an NDA, then put a proposed data center on hold. Microsoft “just realized that it’s not a successful formula when you come into a community under darkness.”

Moses said a bill he introduced to ban data center NDAs, which stalled in the Legislature, is still needed to prevent local governments from signing the agreements. If local officials sign them, “hopefully voters will remember it and hold them accountable,” he said.

Microsoft did not sign NDAs in the Racine County communities of Mount Pleasant, where a multibillion-dollar data center complex is under construction, or in Caledonia, where it withdrew a data center proposal amid community opposition. But its announcement comes at a time of public backlash against data centers proposed in Wisconsin.

The company said its new position on NDAs is an effort toward transparency “as we continue to build trust with the communities around the world in which we operate” and that it would work with local governments to terminate current NDAs. Microsoft has one in Kenosha, where a data center is proposed.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for further comment.

Its move won qualified praise from data center NDA critics, such as Midwest Environmental Advocates. “Companies typically don’t make announcements about building community trust unless those communities are already pushing back pretty hard,” the group said in a statement.

Sheboygan Falls Mayor Randy Meyer, board president of the League of Wisconsin Municipalities, said municipalities feel pressure to sign NDAs because they need new development to increase tax revenue. It can be difficult to know when in the planning process a development proposal should be disclosed to the public, he added.

But “if the companies that are building data centers say there’s nothing wrong with them, they don’t hurt the environment, all that stuff, well, then there’s no real reason to be secretive about it,” Meyer said.

Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, also praised Microsoft’s move, which happened during Sunshine Week, which promotes public access to government meetings and records. 

But Lueders encouraged local government officials to be more transparent.

“There’s nothing the public hates more than the idea that their public officials are doing things behind their back,” he said. “That’s like the most offensive thing that you could do as a public official is hide information that affects the people you represent.”

Wisconsin Watch has reported that at least five Wisconsin communities signed data center NDAs. In one of them, Beaver Dam — where an NDA was signed more than a year before the proposal was announced — a $1 billion Meta data center is under construction.

Meta declined to comment on Microsoft’s announcement.

Vantage Data Centers, which is building a $15 billion data center in Port Washington with Oracle and OpenAI, did not reply to a request for comment.

The push to build data centers nationwide has meant more than $1 billion in business for Wisconsin suppliers, even before any of the hyperscale data centers in Wisconsin begin operation.

The data centers proposed or under construction in Wisconsin typically cost billions of dollars and cover hundreds of acres. 

Some communities that have not signed NDAs have taken other steps to keep data center proposals quiet.

The Madison suburb of DeForest dropped a proposed $12 billion data center in January, the day after Wisconsin Watch reported that village staff worked for at least seven months with Virginia-based QTS Data Centers before the proposal was publicly announced in October. 

Wisconsin Watch also found that in Port Washington, when citizens requested emails about the data center, the city turned over emails but withheld documents that were attached to the emails — something a judge found did not follow the state open records law.

Blaine Halverson, a leading opponent of the proposed data center in Menomonie, said Microsoft’s announcement is a step, but he remains skeptical.

“I think that committing to not doing NDAs does not mean they’re not committed to still being secretive,” he said. 

“What the pledge needs to be (is) that we’re going to not just not use NDAs. We’re going to be up front. We’re going to encourage and allow free communication from the beginning with communities. And we’re going to insist on being available to answer the public’s questions from the front end. That’s what needs to happen.”

Local data center critics praise Microsoft’s pledge to stop using NDAs, but remain skeptical 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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• Jobs for data centers happen in three phases: development, construction and operations. 

• The largest numbers of workers are on site when a data center is being built, experts said. 

• The number of long-term jobs a data center brings depends on the size of the facility. 

• It’s difficult to measure the ripple effects data centers have on the economy; however, experts say local businesses can benefit from producing components and products for data centers. 

• Data center technicians will be in high demand as more facilities come online.

As data center developers stake out land in Wisconsin communities, much debate has surrounded whether the computer-packed warehouses will deliver economic benefits locally. 

Waves of opposition and concerns about land, water and electricity use routinely follow data center proposals, while supporters echo that the centers will create jobs and help the economy. 

But what jobs? How many of them? And will they last?

To answer those questions, Wisconsin Watch talked to three professors:

• Xiaofan Liang, who specializes in urban and regional planning at the University of Michigan.
• Scott Adams, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee labor economist. 
• Dijo Alexander, who specializes in information technology, digital transformation and artificial intelligence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. 

Here are some takeaways.

What kinds of jobs do data centers bring?

Data center jobs fall into three major categories that represent phases in their creation: 

• Development
• Construction
• Operations

A data center first needs people to plan for its existence. Developers, engineers, designers and planners lay that groundwork. 

“The data center industry as an ecosystem is pretty big … When they first introduce a data center to a place, they have to figure out the design standard, how to construct all kinds of facilities, how it connects to city systems,” Liang said.

Then, developers must hire heaps of hands-on laborers to construct the gigantic warehouses from the ground up — the largest portion of workers needed in creating and operating a data center. Among other professions, this includes electricians, plumbers and pipefitters, carpenters, structural steel and iron workers, concrete workers and earth drillers.

The job boom from early phases fizzles out once the building is complete, Liang said. 

“(During) construction time, you usually have a lot more jobs — maybe 10 times in magnitude more so than operations,” Liang said. 

Operations jobs, fewer in quantity, are largely “unglamorous,” Adams said. 

Some of these roles have relatively low barriers to entry, such as maintenance workers and security guards. Meanwhile, electricians and HVAC workers are needed, considering that power and cooling are data centers’ “two most important inputs,” Adams said. 

Adams echoed a popular analogy likening data centers to warehouses full of rotting bananas that need constant cooling and replacing.

“You need banana technicians, more or less, that take the rotted bananas out and replace them with new bananas,” Adams said. “Now, granted, they’re much more expensive bananas in there, and they’re doing a whole lot, and it requires a little more expertise. But again that expertise, by and large, can be developed pretty quickly.”

Those workers will be data center technicians — people who install servers, replace hardware and cables, monitor systems and notice when things break down.

How many jobs do data centers bring? 

The number of jobs created depends on a data center’s size, Liang said.  

That can initially mean thousands of jobs at gargantuan developments like in Mount Pleasant. Microsoft says it has employed 3,000 people to construct the location, compared to 500 full-time workers once the plant is operating. But these numbers are expected to climb as the company constructs a cluster of additional centers at the site. 

Not all of these workers will be local. Given the temporary high demand, the projects will likely need out-of-town construction laborers who travel to the area and don’t stay long term.

Smaller projects will employ far fewer people. For a typical data center, Microsoft estimates it hires about 50 full-time employees. What those numbers mean for the local area depends on the community’s size. 

“In a bigger city, like Atlanta, it’s like a drop in the ocean, right? It doesn’t really affect much,” Liang said. “In a rural area, in a smaller town, hundreds of jobs … are a big deal.”

What about the trickle-down economic benefits? 

A sizable new employer entering communities could ripple across other nearby industries, though Liang notes this is hard to measure. 

“(A data center) just has such a big infrastructure need that trickles down in many different ways,” Liang said. “Now we need expanded utility infrastructure, grid, fiber, water, all these things. Construction of these infrastructure, even though it’s not directly related to (a) data center, could increase local employment in those areas.”

Inside a data center are “cabinets after cabinets of steel frames holding computers” that need to be built, Alexander said. This can boost local manufacturing, especially the metal fabrication industry. 

Wisconsin manufacturers have already begun cashing in on the construction boom nationwide. As Wisconsin Watch previously reported, just three Wisconsin companies alone have amassed more than $1 billion in equipment sales — such as motors, generators and cooling systems —  to data centers.

Massive developments like Microsoft’s in Mount Pleasant can potentially lead to a “tech corridor,” a cluster of warehouses and manufacturers near the data center they serve, Alexander said. 

“If we take the initiative and if we bring a few big enough component manufacturers, we can create locally created components for these data centers to consume,” Alexander said. “It’s like if you have a big restaurant or food manufacturer here, you will have agriculture around there, because it is easy for you to bring your produce for their consumption. Just like that. ”

The trend could also activate industries like nuclear power, Adams said. Building data centers  in conjunction with nuclear reactors to generate their power would fuel even more construction and energy jobs, he added. In Kewaunee County, an energy company wants to rebuild Kewaunee Power Station, a defunct nuclear power plant, anticipating energy demand from AI and data centers.

In more rural communities or near smaller data centers, the trickle-down effects could prove more modest — perhaps a few new restaurants and housing units, Adams said. 

Alexander also noted the effects could also be less concentrated, with growth spilling into neighboring cities as employees work at the center but live elsewhere.

But will enough permanent jobs be created to sustain the growth sparked during the early labor-intensive development phase? That’s unclear, Adams said. 

“We don’t have a firm enough grasp about the indirect effects in the longer term,” Adams said. “Short run, that’ll be great. Longer run, can we sustain the new development that might happen around these? I don’t know the answer to that. I think if the power generation side of it comes in connection with them, there’s more of a chance that that will work.”

Who are data center technicians?

Data center technicians are perhaps the most novel job introduced by the data center boom. The roles are more specialized than others needed inside the warehouses.

Job postings for data center technicians at Microsoft’s Milwaukee location say the workers will be “preparing, installing, performing diagnostics, troubleshooting, replacing, and/or decommissioning equipment under the guidance of more experienced data center colleagues.” 

The posting states the job requires a high school diploma, knowledge of computer hardware and some experience with IT equipment. Pay for lower-level technicians ranges from $23 to $36 per hour, with more experienced workers making up to about $48 per hour.

Adams said likely candidates will include engineers and computer coders and people now entering college with their sights on data center work. Microsoft and Gateway Technical College in Kenosha launched a “Data Center Academy,” preparing students to work in data center operations. Adams believes partnerships like this will become more common.

Are these good jobs?

You can use the interactive table below to explore many of the jobs data centers are expected to create, including wages, employment totals and required education.

Here’s what the data center boom means for Wisconsin’s workforce 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 data centers in Mount Pleasant in southeast Wisconsin are projected to use much more water annually than would fill four Olympic-size pools.

Water to operate the facilities, including for cooling, will be supplied by the city of Racine.

The first data center, described by Microsoft as “the world’s most powerful data center,” is expected to begin operation in 2026.

Racine projects that facility will use 2.81 million gallons of water (roughly four Olympic pools) in 2026.

But a second data center is also under construction and a 15-center expansion is planned.

Racine projects total water usage will be 8.44 million gallons annually (roughly 12 pools).

The projections don’t include water that will be needed to generate electricity to fuel the data centers.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated in 2024 that 92.5% of the water U.S. data centers used was to generate electricity, 7.5% for cooling.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• The Conversation: Data centers consume massive amounts of water – companies rarely tell the public exactly how much
• Microsoft: Made in Wisconsin: The world’s most powerful AI datacenter
• City of Racine Water Utility: Mount Pleasant data center water projections
• WPR: Mount Pleasant commission approves Microsoft’s plans for data center expansion
• Badger Institute: Claims of data center water use are laughably wrong
• WPR: Microsoft data centers will use up to 8.4M gallons of water each year, records show
• Midwest Environmental Advocates: Demanding Data Center Transparency – City of Racine
• Clean Wisconsin: Analysis: Offsite Water Use of Data Centers

Is a claim that a massive data center will use only 4 Olympic swimming pools of water per year accurate? 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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• At least five Wisconsin communities have signed nondisclosure agreements with data center developers, including the town of Beloit.

• Even in communities without an NDA, there has been pushback against transparency. For example, Port Washington was sued because it released emails referencing a project, but not the attached files.

• It’s unclear if the state Senate will take up a bill that would ban data center NDAs, but the Assembly has already adjourned without passing the bill.

At a Jan. 28 public forum on Wisconsin data centers, Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke boasted that his city did not sign a nondisclosure agreement that would have concealed plans for a $15 billion facility that is now under construction.

“If you’ve got the courage and you push back and say, ‘Listen, we’re just not going to do it,’ (the data center developers) will find a way to operate without having to sign an NDA,” Neitzke said. “So, we did not and we will not.”

On the same day Neitzke was touting his community’s openness, Port Washington was in court over its refusal to provide communications about its data center. The city had turned over emails, but not documents attached to the emails.

It’s one example, beyond NDAs, of local governments hiding details of proposed large-scale AI data centers, which are projected to span hundreds of acres, cost billions of dollars and transform communities.

Wisconsin Watch reported in January that NDAs were signed in at least four Wisconsin communities where artificial intelligence data centers are proposed or being built — Beaver Dam, Kenosha, Janesville and Menomonie. Since then, Wisconsin Watch has learned about a fifth project with an NDA, this one in the town of Beloit — showing that discussions there occurred more than a year before any public announcement was made.

Port Washington stymies public records requests 

Construction began in December on Lighthouse, the 672-acre Vantage-OpenAI-Oracle data center campus in Port Washington, north of Milwaukee.

Four months earlier, philanthropist Lynde Uihlein, a town of Port Washington resident, environmentalist and major Democratic donor, made a public records request of the city. She asked for any communications between the city and the data center developer dating back to Jan. 1, 2025.

The Wisconsin public records law declares that “all persons are entitled to the greatest possible information regarding the affairs of government” and that governmental bodies must respond to requests “as soon as practicable and without delay.”

After nearly three months, the city did not reply to Uihlein’s request, so she sued.

The city responded by turning over emails, but not the documents attached to those emails, such as a draft development agreement. The city’s attorney explained that Uihlein didn’t specifically ask for the attachments.

“When cities want to court large, community-changing development, they also should be prepared to act with maximum transparency,” said Madison lawyer Christa Westerberg, one of the lawyers representing Uihlein.

“The city of Port Washington has been too slow to respond to requests about the data center and even when it has, there are gaps, like providing emails without attachments. This was foreseeable and avoidable.”

Wisconsin Watch is one of Westerberg’s clients, but is not a party to this case. Westerberg did not participate in the writing or editing of this report.

City Attorney Matthew Nugent told Wisconsin Watch: “The assertion that the city refused to produce email attachments is inaccurate. The city reasonably interpreted the original request to seek the email communications themselves, that is, the body of the email message, not the separate documents attached to those communications.”

At a court hearing Jan. 28, Ozaukee County Circuit Court Judge Adam Gerol rejected the idea that documents attached to emails aren’t part of the emails themselves. “There has not been a complete response to the open records request,” he said.

In February, the city turned over emails along with attachments to Uihlein, and Gerol ruled that city officials must submit to depositions to answer questions from Uihlein’s lawyers.

Gerol will be asked to determine whether the city has fully complied with the public records law, whether its delay in replying violated the law and whether it should have to pay Uihlein’s legal fees.

Another denial

The city used the same rationale to partially deny another public records request.

Port Washington resident Michael Beaster, an opponent of the data center, asked the city Nov. 20 for emails and other communications between city officials and the data center developer. 

The city replied six weeks later, sending some emails but no attachments to the emails. An attorney for the city told Beaster he would need to submit another request if he wanted attachments because Beaster did not specifically request those.

“It feels like they’re being overly cautious in trying to protect the city,” Beaster said, “which certainly isn’t serving the public.”

Beaster is running unopposed April 7 for an open seat on the Port Washington city council. He helped lead a failed effort to recall Neitzke over the data center.

Neitzke said he could not comment on why the city has not turned over email attachments, other than to say he is not part of the process of releasing records.

NDA for possible Beloit data center

News surfaced this month of a possible data center an hour southeast of Madison in the town of Beloit. The town, saying it was responding to information “being disseminated” about a possible data center, announced it had begun “very preliminary discussions” and signed a predevelopment agreement with Delaware-based Cambrin LLC.

Wisconsin Watch has since learned that the town signed an NDA with Cambrin in February 2025 — more than a year before making its announcement.

The NDA and other documents provided to Wisconsin Watch in response to a public records request do not directly refer to a data center. 

The documents indicate that “Project Corn Maze” would initially include 700,000 square feet of buildings, employ 50 people and require tax incremental financing from the town.

The records also show that the town has exchanged emails about the project since April 2025. They indicate that Cambrin LLC was formed to make the development proposal and don’t identify what company would operate the data center.

Signs of openness 

Access to records also was at issue for the first phase of a data center complex south of Milwaukee in Mount Pleasant. The first center in that Microsoft complex is expected to open later this year.

This month the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council announced it is giving its annual citizen openness advocate award to Midwest Environmental Advocates. The public interest law firm successfully sued the city of Racine for records disclosing how much water it is projecting to provide for the Mount Pleasant data center.

The council also gave an award to Wisconsin Watch for its story on data center NDAs.

Amid reports of a possible data center in Grant County and as Meta seeks to add a data center to one it is building in Beaver Dam, there is movement toward more openness on several fronts.

The state Public Service Commission, which approves requests for new utility plants and utility rates, initially accepted a confidentiality request from Alliant Energy in its application to serve the Beaver Dam data center despite numerous redactions — including how much energy the center would use.

On Feb. 26, however, state administrative law judge Michael Newmark, who is overseeing the PSC hearings on the request, told Alliant to resubmit its request with fewer redactions. Alliant did the next day with less information blacked out. 

“It seemed like the redactions were not going to allow us to do sort of the basic functions of open government,” Newmark said at the hearing. Fewer redactions would enable the commission to rule on the application in a way that is “defensible in court and in the court of public opinion,” he said.

Last week the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Water Policy released a model for state legislation to “promote transparency and environmental protections” for data centers.

The model, which recommends temporary statewide moratoriums on data centers, makes several recommendations to increase transparency, including a ban on local governments signing NDAs and requiring public disclosures on water and electricity use before any approvals are given.

The “continued absence of comprehensive and timely disclosure requirements,” the report said, “undermines public understanding and limits informed decision-making around siting, permitting and environmental impacts.”

And on Friday, a state Senate committee on a 4-1 vote approved Senate Bill 969, which would prohibit local governments from signing NDAs with data center developers. No further action has yet been scheduled.

The committee also advanced, 3-2, Assembly Bill 840, which would require the Public Service Commission to protect ratepayers from the costs of providing electricity to data centers. The bill contains a controversial requirement that renewable energy used for a data center be located on the site. The Assembly passed the bill 53-44 in January. 

Legislation banning NDAs is pending in several states, including two that took action last week.

A Minnesota House of Representatives committee approved a bill banning data center NDAs and sent it to the House floor.

In Florida, a provision banning NDAs that industry groups lobbied against was removed from a data center bill. 

A report released last week by the Alliance of Great Lakes urged governmental bodies to limit the use of NDAs so that the public can know how much water and energy a data center will use.

“When critical information is withheld, decision-making shifts risk from private developers to communities and public utilities,” the report said.

More than NDAs. Wisconsin communities face scrutiny over data center secrecy. 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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Two attempts to peel back the veil of secrecy over the proliferation of data centers, including one by Wisconsin Watch reporter Tom Kertscher, are being honored in this year’s Openness in Government Awards, or Opees, bestowed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council.

In advance of national Sunshine Week (sunshineweek.org), March 15-21, the council has named the winners of its 20th annual Opees. These recognize outstanding efforts to protect the state’s tradition of open government, as well as highlight some threats to it. Winners have been invited to appear at a free public event in Madison on March 19. (See WFOIC website for details.)

The winners are:

Public Openness Advocate (Popee): Vilas County District Attorney Karl Hayes. District attorneys in Wisconsin are statutorily empowered to enforce the state’s open records and open meetings laws, but in practice rarely do so. Early this year, Hayes showed how it can be done, warning officials in the town of Presque Isle that they needed to comply with a nearly year-old request from the Lakeland Times newspaper for records regarding the town’s computers. His intervention succeeded, and the records were released. Other DAs might look for occasions where they can turn the lever in favor of openness.

Citizen Openness Advocate (Copee): Midwest Environmental Advocates. This nonprofit public interest law firm last year filed two pivotal lawsuits challenging the secrecy surrounding data center projects. The first, against the city of Racine, forced the prompt release of water usage projections for Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant campus. The second lawsuit, against the state Public Service Commission (PSC), contested the “trade secret” status of energy demand data for Meta’s proposed data center in Beaver Dam; that case is pending. Kudos to MEA for insisting on the public’s right to know.

Media Openness Advocate (Mopee): The Badger Project. In recent years, this nonprofit news outlet has been requesting records from police departments around the state about internal investigations of police officers and suing when they are not provided. In 2025, it filed three such lawsuits — against a police department in Racine County, the state Department of Transportation and St. Croix County. All led to the release of records. The Badger Project is now appealing St. Croix County’s refusal to pay attorney fees, which could lead to the overturning of a deeply problematic state Supreme Court decision. Fingers crossed. 

Open Records Scoop of the Year (Scoopee): Tie: Tom Kertscher of Wisconsin Watch; Danielle DuClos of The Cap Times. Among much other good reporting on openness issues, the work of these two journalists stands out. Kertscher pulled back the curtain on the secrecy surrounding data centers, including at least four projects in which local officials signed nondisclosure agreements with the companies. And DuClos reported on how the state Department of Public Instruction secretly investigated more than 200 Wisconsin K-12 educators accused of sexual misconduct or grooming behaviors toward students, prompting a statewide audit and legislative action.

No Friend of Openness (Nopee): Deborah Kerr, superintendent of the St. Francis School District. While there were other contenders for this award, there was also little question that Kerr would be the winner and new champion. Last June, she threatened to have a TMJ4 News reporter and camera operator arrested for wanting to film a school board meeting “because you did not give us any notice or tell us why you were here,” neither of which is required. The jaw-dropping video (see for yourself at https://tinyurl.com/zvam889a) went viral, and Kerr issued a weak apology, but her eruption is one for the ages. Credit reporter Megan Lee for her deft handling of the situation.

Whistleblower of the Year (Whoopee): John Sigwart. This former Port Washington city council member refused to keep the public in the dark about a clandestinely proposed microchip production facility, revealing that local officials had signed nondisclosure agreements. The city’s mayor retaliated by stripping Sigwart of his committee appointments, precipitating an end to his many years of public service, said an editorial in the Ozaukee Press. Sigwart died in August at age 80, but his example of courage will live on.

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group dedicated to open government. Bill Lueders is the group’s president.

Your Right to Know: Opees highlight good works, and bad 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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• While no hyperscale data centers are operating yet in the state, Wisconsin companies are helping power massive facilities elsewhere by supplying parts and equipment. 

• Just three Wisconsin companies have already amassed more than $1 billion in data center-related business. 

• It’s still unclear how much large-scale Wisconsin data centers will ultimately contribute to the state’s economy — and some question their long-term impact.

None of the billion-dollar-plus data centers planned for Wisconsin are yet online, but the nationwide, artificial-intelligence-fueled market is already spurring economic growth in the state.

Wisconsin business leaders say no comprehensive accounting has been done. But just three Wisconsin companies have already amassed more than $1 billion in data center-related business: 

• Regal Rexnord, a Milwaukee maker of motors, announced in February it had received $735 million in orders from data centers.

• Generac, a Waukesha-based manufacturer, told Wisconsin Watch it has a backlog of $400 million in orders for backup generators for data centers. Moreover, Generac announced Feb. 19 it is acquiring a 120-employee Illinois engineering company to help meet data center demand. 

• Racine-based Modine announced in February 2025 it received $180 million in orders from a new customer for data center cooling systems to be manufactured in Virginia and Mississippi. In addition, the company in November opened a 155,000-square-foot plant in suburban Milwaukee to manufacture the systems.

Many companies don’t publicly report details on data center business they do, so it’s impossible to tally total economic impact in Wisconsin. But there are other examples.

Trane Technologies is manufacturing cooling systems for data centers in La Crosse, where it was founded in 1913, and says data centers are a strong part of its business. In November 2023, Excellerate opened a 385,000-square-foot plant in Little Chute, primarily to manufacture “modular electrical buildings” for data centers. Maysteel, a Washington County manufacturer, opened a data center hub in November 2024 and announced in February it is expanding the operation. 

The sheer demand to outfit data centers has meant that some business has trickled down from larger companies to smaller ones.

Modular Power & Data has 90 employees in Dane County and suburban Milwaukee to manufacture electrical distribution products. Chief Operating Officer Erik Thompson told Wisconsin Watch that Modular did $10 million of data center business in 2025 and expects to more than double that in 2026.

That work is “transforming a very small company into what I believe will be a very large Wisconsin manufacturer,” Thompson said. “Without this growth, we’d always be much smaller.” 

Because no hyperscale data centers are scheduled to begin operating in Wisconsin until later this year, their ultimate economic impact remains unknown.

Nationally, data centers are known for spurring construction work. That includes companies such as Brownsville-based Michels Corp., a lead contractor on the $15 billion data center under construction in Port Washington, and Waukesha-based Boldt Co. But those jobs are often temporary. 

“The standard data center development model — speedy dealmaking and opaque negotiations — delivers short-term construction jobs and revenue, but little durable local economic upside,” the Washington, D.C.- based Brookings think tank concluded in February.

In Wisconsin, data center expenditures are projected to raise the state’s gross domestic product from $354 million in 2024 to $881 million in 2029, according to University of Virginia economist João-Pedro Ferreira, author of a study done for the Joyce Foundation. The data center workforce is expected to triple from 360 to 1,143 jobs, but constitute only 0.09% of the overall labor market.

“The impacts might seem a lot, but they are not,” Ferreira said.

At least $46 billion in hyperscale data centers are under construction or under consideration in Wisconsin. Besides Port Washington, $20 billion worth of data centers are under construction and planned in Mount Pleasant, and a $1 billion facility is being built in Beaver Dam. Proposals are pending in Janesville, Kenosha and Menomonie. 

That’s as concerns about impacts on land, water and electricity spur loud opposition to data centers in Wisconsin. On Facebook alone, more than 24,000 people have joined groups to fight hyperscale centers that are proposed or under construction in the state. 

But Wisconsin businesses see more growth from AI. In November, a foundation connected with Waukesha County-based Pieper Electric announced a $2 million donation to expand Waukesha County Technical College’s Applied AI Lab.

Dale Kooyenga, CEO of the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and a former Republican state lawmaker, said skills being developed for data center construction have value after the facilities are built.

“These men and women building these data centers aren’t building just buildings, they’re building the world’s largest computers,” he said. 

Kooyenga also pushed back on claims that AI will be bad for the economy.

“The concept that robots and technology are out to get your jobs has been a concept in America since 1900. That’s not a new fear,” he said. “But the fact is, is that there will be a different-looking economy and different opportunities.”

AI’s growth is affecting workers unevenly across industries. 

It’s reducing employment in the most AI-exposed industries, such as computer systems design, and it’s especially hitting younger workers, according to a new Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas analysis. 

But wages in those sectors have continued to grow as AI tools are benefiting veteran workers — those who have gained knowledge from experience.

Data centers fuel $1 billion in Wisconsin business growth, but some question long-term impact 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.

Data centers, artificial intelligence and fossil fuels are dominating headlines. Across the  United States, more than $350 billion was invested in AI and data-center infrastructure, with  tens of billions of dollars proposed in Wisconsin. Investment and economic development are  often framed as unequivocal wins, but energy infrastructure is different. If built without  foresight, the consequences will reshape the future. 

Growth is certain; however the balance between positive and negative growth is yet to be  determined. 

I have worked in Wisconsin’s energy sector since 2019, beginning in residential and  commercial solar. Over the years, I’ve seen energy debates around renewable energy become  increasingly politicized, even as their original purpose remains unchanged: to produce reliable  electricity, reduce dependence on fragile infrastructure, and give communities more control  over their energy supply. Yet, the existing industry stakeholders have blocked deployment and  ownership for everyone but themselves. While homeowners, farmers, tribal nations and  small businesses face mounting restrictions on deploying their own power systems, the state  has moved quickly to approve massive new energy loads for data centers. These agreements  are also accompanied by preferential rate structures, infrastructure guarantees and the ability  to negotiate. 

That contradiction should concern all of us. 

Wisconsin residents have grown accustomed to electric rate increases justified by grid  maintenance, system upgrades and long-term reliability. According to federal energy data,  Wisconsin already ranks among the top 15 states for electricity costs, and utilities have  signaled additional increases in the years ahead. At the same time, power reliability has  deteriorated in both rural and urban areas. 

In parts of Milwaukee, aging poles lean precariously, and low-hanging lines form tangled  webs that look untouched for decades. In rural Wisconsin, the impacts are similar. Tribal  nations such as the Sokaogon Chippewa and the Menominee Nation have experienced  long-duration outages lasting days or even weeks, disrupting health care, food systems and  economic activity. These are not isolated incidents; they are symptoms of an overstretched  and unevenly maintained grid. 

Against this backdrop, Wisconsin is welcoming some of the most energy-intensive facilities  on the planet. A single large data center can consume as much electricity as a small city,  operating around the clock, every day of the year. The rise of AI only accelerates this demand.  Unlike the rest of the state, these facilities do not proceed without firm assurances of power  availability, reliability, transmission access,and cost certainty. 

Data centers operate under a different set of rules.  

Utilities and regulators are willing to negotiate specialized rate structures, accelerate  infrastructure investments, and prioritize reliability. Meanwhile, everyday ratepayers, who  collectively use far less power and have far less leverage, are asked to shoulder rising costs  and accept declining service quality.  

This is not a free market. Wisconsin’s energy industry has become an unregulated monopoly.  Large utilities control generation, transmission and distribution, and they largely determine  who is allowed to produce power and under what terms. While utilities have invested heavily  in renewable energy they own, they continue to restrict external ownership and  community-scale generation knowing that distributed energy can reduce peak demand,  improve resilience, and lower long-term system costs.  

If utilities can justify new power plants, substations and transmission lines for data centers,  they must also explain why a similar urgency does not apply to grid reliability, ownership  opportunities for distributed energy systems and lower rates for Wisconsin residents. Why is  Wisconsin able to deliver gigawatts of electricity to data centers, yet unable to address  persistent grid failures in communities that have been struggling for decades?  

This moment calls for accountability, not ideology. Wisconsin deserves transparency in how  data center energy deals are structured, who bears the costs of new infrastructure and how  reliability risks are distributed. Ratepayers deserve to know why the largest electricity users  receive the greatest assurances, while households, businesses and communities are told to  accept less while paying more. Economic growth should not come at the expense of affordability,  resilience or fairness. If Wisconsin is going to power the future of AI and digital  infrastructure, it must also protect the people and communities that power Wisconsin itself.  

This energy crisis is not inevitable. It is the result of choices. And those choices will  determine whether Wisconsin’s energy future delivers reliable power for all, or a system  defined by higher costs, more frequent outages and growing divides between communities. 

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Data centers and local communities would be barred from working in secret under legislation that received a public hearing before a state Senate committee Tuesday.

The Senate Committee on Utilities, Technology and Tourism also heard testimony on a pair of competing bills, both pitched as ensuring that data centers pay their own way for the electric power they use and controlling how they use water resources.

SB 969 would impose a blanket ban on non-disclosure agreements between data center companies and the municipalities where they’re planning projects.

“Unfortunately, we have witnessed a troubling pattern in Wisconsin and throughout our country — community leaders are signing secrecy deals with big tech companies and their agents to conceal material facts about the development of billion-dollar data centers from the public,” said Sen. Andre Jacque (R-New Franken), the bill’s author, in his testimony on the measure. “These same entities seek to hide vital information about the scope and impacts of their intended developments from the local officials charged with guarding their citizens’ welfare, undermining sound decision-making and eroding confidence in the process.”

The secrecy surrounding a data center project in Menomonie prompted local opposition that led the community’s city council to pass an ordinance in January stopping a developer from advancing the $1.6 billion project.

“This bill is really about trust,” said state Rep. Clint Moses (R-Menomonie), the author of the bill’s Assembly companion. “It makes sure those conversations happen in the open and not behind closed doors.”

A data center industry lobbyist opposed the measure, asserting that a ban on non-disclosure agreements, or NDAs, could stall Wisconsin’s emergence as a prime data center location.  

Brad Tietz, the state policy director for the Data Center Coalition, said the industry group has been working with its member businesses “on model frameworks that ensure early and proactive community engagement and transparency while safeguarding sensitive proprietary and security information.”

Non-disclosure agreements are especially important in the early stages of data center site selection, “where a company may be considering multiple sites and has not yet made a final decision,” Tietz told lawmakers. “But to simply put a blanket opposition on NDAs would put Wisconsin at a competitive disadvantage right when it is primed to do exceptionally well in this industry.”

Data center utility costs

The bulk of Tuesday’s hearing focused on two other pieces of legislation, one authored by Democrats and the other by Republicans. Both measures were written with the intent of ensuring that power-hungry data center developments don’t pass off their electricity costs to the rest of the public.

SB 729 is authored by Sen. Jodi Habush Sinykin (D-Whitefish Bay) and state Rep. Angela Stroud (D-Ashland). The Assembly companion is AB 722.

“Wisconsin must establish a comprehensive and responsible regulatory framework that protects Wisconsin taxpayers, workers, and our natural resources now and into the future,” Habush Sinykin told the committee. “Yet here’s the rub. Currently, Wisconsin has no statewide regulatory standards governing hyperscale data centers. None.”

Habush Sinykin said that the bill was written in consultation with the state Public Service Commission. It would put data centers in a new class of electric power users, “very large customers,” and require utilities serving those users to file a rate case for that class every two years.

“I believe that we all have a shared goal of ensuring that the public does not pay for the energy expenses of data centers,” Stroud told the committee. “According to the Public Service Commission, establishing a very large customer class tariff is the most effective tool currently available to ensure that energy-related costs are borne by data centers rather than shifted on to the general public.”

Utilities would also be required to report quarterly their data center users’ energy consumption and sources and make that information public.

Because data centers are also heavy uses of water, the bill requires water utilities to notify the PSC of individual customers that use 25% of the utility’s water volume.

The Habush Sinykin/Stroud bill includes provisions to encourage renewable energy use and the use of union labor. In order to qualify for a sales and use tax exemption from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., the data center must derive at least 70% of its energy from renewables and pay the construction workers the prevailing wage in the region if they aren’t covered by a union contract.

The committee chair, Sen. Julian Bradley (R-New Berlin), questioned those provisions.

“This bill appears to me as though it’s going to say, ‘Well, you can come here. We understand you bring a massive economic impact, but actually we want more,’” Bradley said. “It’s going to drive them away from the state of Wisconsin and then we’re going to lose out.”

But Stroud said data center developers have been enthusiastic about adopting clean energy.

“We are extending tax credits to the richest companies in the world. It is not a small thing to do that,” Stroud said. “We should be getting a huge benefit. And it would change the conversation, I think, in a lot of these communities if they had access to significant benefits.”

Republicans go in a different direction

The alternative bill — AB 840/SB 843, authored by Rep. Shannon Zimmerman (R-River Falls) and Sen. Romain Quinn (R-Birchwood) — mostly takes different approaches on all of the issues involved. The Assembly version passed that house in January on a mostly party-line vote of 53-44, with two Democrats voting in favor of the legislation and one Republican voting against it.

The bill directs the PSC, in writing its rate-making orders, to ensure that the utility costs of large data centers aren’t passed off to any other customer, but doesn’t offer specific directions on how to do that. It includes language stating that developers must hire Wisconsin workers to the extent possible.

The legislation also would require that any renewable energy facility that primarily serves the load of a large data center be located on the data center property.

“This will improve reliability by reducing dependence on a distant power grid and safeguards our communities from being burdened with large energy projects that exist solely to serve data center facilities elsewhere,” Quinn said.

The bill also requires the water used at a center to be recycled, and includes requirements that data center developers post a bond that can be used to reclaim the property if the project is abandoned before it’s completed.

Earlier, Stroud said the GOP bill’s requirement restricting renewable energy to on-site at data centers would be “a non-starter for many of the companies seeking to locate in our state.”

In his testimony, however, Quinn defended the provision as a safeguard against saddling other customers with the data centers’ energy costs. “I believe we should make it more attractive for data centers to build their own power supply,” he said.

Sen. Melissa Ratcliff (D-Cottage Gove) asked Quinn why he and Zimmerman didn’t work with Sinykin and Stroud on a common piece of legislation. Quinn replied that the provisions the Democrats prioritized wouldn’t pass in the current Legislature, including the prevailing wage provision and the renewable energy provisions.

During her portion of the hearing, Habush Sinykin said the provision for recycling water in the Republican bill was of interest to her. She also emphasized that lawmakers should work together across the aisle on legislation to address the broader concerns about data centers.

“The Senate is here through March, and the Assembly can be called back as well,” Habush Sinykin said. “I believe it makes sense and the conditions warrant a call for a special session or an extraordinary session, because people in Wisconsin do not want to wait another year or more to have regulation filling this vacuum.”

Tom Content, executive director of the Citizens Utility Board, testified that affordability was a top concern for Wisconsin ratepayers.

“Electricity costs are surging at a pace higher than inflation over the past four years,” Content told the committee. “Wisconsin has the second highest electricity rates in the Midwest.”

His organization “recognizes the intent of the authors on both sides to shield customers from higher costs,” Content said. “Our hope and expectation, given that affordability is job one right now, is that lawmakers will work together in the remaining days of the session and across the aisle to take the most workable provisions of both and find common ground on a plan that the governor will sign into law.”

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The $46 billion in data centers proposed or under construction in Wisconsin continue to make news over who should pay for the electricity to power them, whether municipalities should use nondisclosure agreements to keep details confidential and more. Here are some of the latest updates:

Utility rates: The state Public Service Commission is accepting public comment on a We Energies proposal for determining whether the general public pays any share of the costs of constructing and operating power plants needed to meet data centers’ electricity demands. One concern is creating more “stranded assets” — power plants that are shut down before their debt is paid off. Wisconsin Watch reported in December that Wisconsin ratepayers owe $1 billion for stranded assets.

Legislation: A state Senate committee is holding hearings Tuesday, Feb. 17, on three data center bills. Senate Bill 729 seeks to limit how much general ratepayers can be charged by utilities for the cost of providing electricity to data centers. Senate Bill 843 contains a similar provision and has passed the Assembly, but also contains a controversial requirement that renewable energy used for a data center be on the data center site. Senate Bill 969 would prohibit local governments from signing nondisclosure agreements with data center developers. Separately, a new bill would impose 14 requirements on data center proposals, including prohibiting NDAs between local governments and data center developers. Wisconsin Watch found that local officials in at least four communities signed NDAs to hide details of data center proposals. 

Janesville: The City Council put on the Nov. 3 ballot a referendum proposed by data center opponents that could give voters direct say over a hyperscale data center. If the referendum is approved, it would create an ordinance requiring separate referendum approval for any type of development project worth $450 million or more that is proposed for the former General Motors site. The data center proposed for Janesville is worth $8 billion.

Port Washington: Business groups are suing to block a proposed ordinance affecting economic development projects. The proposal was made by citizens who claimed a lack of transparency by the city over a $15 billion data center now under construction. 

Grant County: A company seeking a site for a $1 billion data center has included rural Cassville in southwest Wisconsin in its search. A local official said he expects to learn in spring whether the county is still being considered.

Interested in data center news? The latest on stories we’re following 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.

The federal administration’s decision to rescind the Environmental Protection Agency’s Endangerment Finding may sound technical. In reality, it targets the legal foundation that has allowed the United States to regulate climate pollution for more than a decade. For Wisconsin, the move introduces new uncertainty just as communities, farmers and businesses invest in cleaner energy, efficiency and more resilient infrastructure.

The 2009 Endangerment Finding concluded that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare. Courts have upheld that determination repeatedly. Eliminating or weakening it does not change the science behind climate change, but it could reshape how power plants, vehicles and industrial facilities are regulated. That shift carries consequences for states already dealing with smoky summers, heavier rainfall and rising infrastructure costs.

Wisconsin’s clean energy economy has expanded steadily, often without much attention. Renewable projects now generate enough electricity to power about 560,000 homes. Roughly 75,000 residents work in clean energy fields, and more than 350 Wisconsin companies supply technologies or services that reduce energy use or emissions. Together, these efforts reflect a broader reality: climate progress here tends to be practical and locally driven because it lowers costs and strengthens communities.

Examples are visible across the state. School districts and municipal buildings are cutting operating expenses through efficiency upgrades supported by Focus on Energy programs. Tribal and low-income households are receiving targeted weatherization investments that improve comfort and reduce utility bills. Builders and manufacturers are adopting higher performance standards to reduce long-term risk.

Federal rollbacks do not automatically halt these efforts, but they complicate financing and planning. Investors and local governments rely on predictable rules. When national standards shift, projects that once appeared viable can stall.

Some of the clearest examples are unfolding in rural Wisconsin. The SolarShare Wisconsin Cooperative is expanding community-owned solar projects that keep energy dollars circulating locally while pairing installations with pollinator habitat or sheep grazing. Hidden Springs Creamery installed a 50-kilowatt solar system to power its creamery and farm operations while continuing to produce artisanal cheeses. These projects reflect a simple idea gaining traction across the state: build it here, power it here, prosper here.

Wisconsin’s dairy sector has also become a testing ground for methane reduction strategies. Anaerobic digesters, renewable natural gas systems and advanced manure management technologies are already operating throughout the state. They reduce emissions while improving water quality and creating new revenue streams for farmers. If federal climate incentives weaken, fewer of these projects may move forward, leaving producers to absorb more risk and potentially slowing innovation that began here.

At the same time, new pressures are emerging from the rapid growth of artificial intelligence and large-scale data centers. Utilities are proposing infrastructure expansions to meet rising electricity demand, raising questions about cost allocation, water use and oversight. Small businesses, tribes, farmers and rural communities are organizing around siting decisions that affect farmland and ratepayers.

This week, the Power Wisconsin Forward campaign, supported by the Clean Economy Coalition of Wisconsin and more than 50 partner organizations, urged the Public Service Commission to ensure that data center costs do not shift onto ordinary customers. The debate highlights a broader reality. Wisconsin’s energy landscape is changing quickly even as federal climate policy moves in the opposite direction.

It would be misleading to suggest Wisconsin’s political environment has become less polarized. Recent legislative sessions show deep divisions and limited consensus on climate priorities. That context makes federal rollbacks more consequential. Without consistent national guardrails, states rely more heavily on local initiatives and market forces, which can advance progress but unevenly.

Legal challenges to the EPA decision are likely, but outcomes remain uncertain. In the meantime, utilities, farmers and local governments must make decisions without clear signals from Washington.

The practical question facing Wisconsin is not whether federal politics will shift. It is whether the state continues investing in projects that already deliver measurable results. Efficiency upgrades lower utility bills. Community solar keeps energy spending local. Methane reduction technologies help farms manage waste while improving soil and water conditions.

In a politically diverse state, climate progress rarely looks dramatic. It often appears as quieter momentum built through local partnerships and incremental gains. The federal rollback raises real risks, but it does not erase the infrastructure or collaboration already underway.

What happens next will be shaped less by national rhetoric and more by decisions made at the Public Service Commission, in county zoning meetings and on working farms across Wisconsin.

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A group of Democratic state lawmakers on Thursday announced a proposal to put a moratorium on data center construction in Wisconsin as communities across the state grapple with local resistance to the development of hyperscale AI data centers. 

Debates around data centers have become increasingly tense in recent months as residents of communities including Mount Pleasant, Mount Horeb, Beaver Dam, Port Washington and Janesville have rallied opposition to  the approval of data centers by local officials. 

While officials in these communities are often tempted by the promise of increased property tax revenue from the facilities, residents have raised objections to their local representatives ceding local land to multibillion-dollar tech companies, the massive amounts of energy and water needed to operate the large data centers and the related effects on local utility rates and the environment to produce all the power.

Several pieces of legislation to regulate data center construction have already been proposed in the Legislature. In January, Assembly Republicans passed a bill that would establish some regulations, but Democrats said it didn’t do enough to prevent electricity costs from being passed on to regular consumers and included a provision that would stymie renewable energy development in the state. 

With just days left before the Legislature ends its work for the session next week, a group of Democratic lawmakers rolled out a proposal that would pause data center construction until “all of the questions that you have, that you have been asking your local mayors, you have been asking your local legislators, you have been asking these data centers, that all of those are actually answered,” Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said at a press conference Thursday afternoon with local data center activists. 

The bill defines a data center as “a facility having a primary purpose of storing, managing, and processing digital data and that has at least 5,000 servers, occupies at least 10,000 square feet, or has an electricity demand of at least 100 megawatts.”

The bill wouldn’t allow the construction of any data centers in the state until the state establishes a data center planning authority; prohibits energy and water costs from being shifted to residential utility customers; creates a “land and community funding mechanism”; eliminates state and local financial subsidies for data centers; mandates public reporting of data center energy and water use; creates data center-specific pollution regulations; requires that 100% of the energy produced for data centers be renewable; requires that data center construction projects pay prevailing or collectively bargained wages; restores planning authority to the Public Service Commission; prohibits non-disclosure agreements between data centers and government entities and creates an enforcement and penalty structure for data centers that violate regulations. 

“The intent is not to permanently prohibit data centers, but to ensure that any future development is responsible, transparent, and does not impose additional financial burdens on Wisconsin households,” a co-sponsorship memo on the proposal states. “Wisconsinites should not be asked to shoulder higher utility costs while large new energy users operate without clear rules, accountability, or public oversight. This bill provides the Legislature with the time and authority necessary to establish a fair and comprehensive framework that protects ratepayers, workers, and local communities before large-scale data centers are allowed to move forward.”

On Thursday, a few dozen people gathered outside the state Capitol to protest against data center construction before meeting in a hearing room for a news conference and panel discussion. Rep. Francesca Hong (D-Madison), one of the several Democrats running in the primary for governor, said at the press conference that the data center proposals have galvanized anti-corporate views in communities of all political stripes. 

“This is about community power and returning community control to folks all across the state,” Hong said. “I am so incredibly grateful because I have not seen this type of bipartisan opposition to corporate control. I have not seen this type of bipartisan support for ensuring that we protect our natural resources. Our natural resources are not for sale. Our health is not for sale. Our shared future depends on all of us fighting right now to ensure that we are holding AI data centers accountable.”

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At a public hearing held by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission Tuesday, dozens of Wisconsin residents decried the effects massive data centers could have on the state’s electricity rates and ability to adopt renewable energy sources. 

The three-member PSC is considering a proposal from the Wisconsin Electric Power Company to establish a tariff system for providing electricity to massive data centers. Under the proposal, “very large” customers that would be subject to the tariff would have a combined energy load of 500 megawatts — the equivalent of powering about 400,000 homes. 

The first phase of Microsoft’s $13.3 billion data center project in Mount Pleasant is projected to require 450 megawatts. 

Critics of the proposal say that under this system, regular consumers will still be on the hook for 25% of the infrastructure costs associated with increasing the state’s energy load. 

Over the past year, the growth of data center development in Wisconsin has spurred an increasingly tense debate. Local governments have been tempted to allow their construction as a source of property tax revenue while local residents raise concerns over energy and water use, the conversion of historical farmland, the ethics of artificial intelligence and long-term environmental impacts.

The massive energy needs of data centers have become the central issue in the debate, with people in Wisconsin and around the country questioning how to manage the demands of giant corporations seeking to use orders of magnitude more energy than is currently being produced.

“I speak to you not only as a We Energies customer, a member of the Wisconsin State Senate, but on behalf of people across Wisconsin who have communicated to me their worry and fear about the development of hyperscale data centers,” Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said at the hearing. “This worry and fear transcends political divides and income brackets, residents and small businesses alike fear that these data centers will fundamentally alter and potentially destroy our Wisconsin way of life, and with good reason; the scale of the proposed development is unprecedented.” 

Larson added that often “this debate is framed as a false choice that our state must prioritize economic growth or meet our clean energy and climate goals. This is simply not true. In reality, Wisconsin can and must be a leader in pursuing both advancing economic development while accelerating a just transition to affordable, reliable, clean energy in a way that does not harm residents, health, economic security or the environment.”

The vast majority of those testifying during the more than three-hour hearing Tuesday afternoon were opposed to the structure of the proposed system — largely due to the 500 megawatt threshold proposed by the utility company. 

Several people said they were concerned that the threshold being set at this level would encourage the growth of still large data centers that use less than 500 megawatts of energy — and the costs of those centers’ electricity use will be passed on to regular consumers. 

“I submit that 500 megawatts is at least an order of magnitude too high,” Pleasant Prairie resident Charles Hasenohrl said. “The threshold should be lower than 50 megawatts, where at that point, companies are required to cover all costs, which again include generation, transmission and distribution.” 

Opponents also said they were concerned that data centers increasing the energy demand in Wisconsin will encourage the PSC and the state’s utility companies to construct new natural gas power plants, instead of encouraging the growth of renewable energy sources such as solar and wind.

“Renewable energy is the cheapest way to generate electricity, and it’s only getting cheaper,” Dr. Jonathan Patz, a professor of health and the environment at UW-Madison, said. 

Patz added that burning fossil fuels to provide energy for currently proposed data centers in southeastern Wisconsin will increase air pollution not only in the immediate region but spread to Chicago and western Michigan. 

“Because the right choice happens to be both the safest and the most affordable. That’s solar and wind power,” Patz said. “Let’s stop killing people unnecessarily with pollution from burning fossil fuels, especially knowing the multi-decadal life span of a power plant. The rest of the world is turning to renewable energy. Why should the PSC prevent us from transitioning to clean energy and improving our health at the same time?”

The handful of people who testified in favor of the proposal were union representatives. Several of the state’s unions have been vocal in supporting the construction of data centers, arguing that their members will benefit from the jobs created while the centers are being built. The union representatives said that the state should work to protect costs from being passed on to ratepayers, but that the state shouldn’t discourage data centers from coming to Wisconsin. 

“These projects require significant amounts of power, far beyond what’s available today to be operational and successfully run,” Jim Meyer, business manager for IBEW Local 2150, said. “Faced with this problem, the traditional method of having a utility company add power generation capacity through building more power plants, then spreading those costs over its customer base, would simply be unfair to its everyday customer, like my membership, who live and work in the areas and are also customers themselves. The VLC tariff will put the tab for those plants exactly where it belongs, with those very large customers who need that new electric load.”

PSC Administrative Judge Michael Newmark said that the job of the commission isn’t to decide if the state should go all in on encouraging data center construction but only the “reasonableness of the rates, terms, and conditions of electric service” in the We Energies proposal. Several people testifying expressed frustration that often the commission holds public hearings only to ultimately vote against the majority sentiment of the public and side with corporate utility interests. 

“I am wondering whether this is an exercise in futility,” Milwaukee resident Ted Kraig said. “Technologically, it makes no sense to be building up old fossil fuel infrastructure, and still, the Public Service Commission just goes and basically rubber stamps it. My concern is that we can have 1,000 people testifying with the best evidence and arguments imaginable, but the Public Service Commission sitting there with little check boxes … We Energies gets whatever it wants.” 

The Public Service Commission is expected to make its decision on the tariff by May 1.

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Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Judge Michael Newmark. We regret the error

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• An eighth billion-dollar data center project is in the early stages of development, this one in southwestern Wisconsin, the Grant County Economic Development Corp. confirmed in an interview Monday.

• An undisclosed company is seeking 400 to 500 acres in the town of Cassville, the town of Cassville chair told Wisconsin Watch. Not much else is known at this point.

• The project comes as public scrutiny of data center projects intensifies and the Public Service Commission considers how to structure rates for large utility consumers like data centers.

A site in the Driftless Area in southwest Wisconsin is being eyed for a possible $1 billion data center, just as the state considers who should pay to provide the unprecedented amount of electricity such projects need.

It would be the eighth major data center known to have been proposed in Wisconsin, though one of those, near Madison, has been dropped.

Ron Brisbois, executive director of the Grant County Economic Development Corp., said Feb. 9 he expects to learn by spring whether Grant County remains in consideration by a company scouting sites for what it said would be a $1 billion data center. 

“They’re casting a pretty wide net, Grant County just happens to be part of that net,” Brisbois told Wisconsin Watch. “It’s very, very preliminary.” 

The revelation contrasts with how other Wisconsin officials have handled data center proposals. 

A Wisconsin Watch investigation found that local officials in some of the seven communities where hyperscale data centers have been proposed worked on the proposals for months before making any announcement to the public. In four of the communities, officials signed confidential nondisclosure agreements (NDAs), pledging to keep details of the plans private.

Brisbois said he has not been asked to sign a data center NDA. He said he met with a company, whom he would not identify, in November before announcing at an open meeting in December that a $1 billion data center was being floated in Grant County. That mention was reported by local news media.

Brisbois told Wisconsin Watch he felt that his board of directors deserved to know about the initial inquiries, but that he wouldn’t release details that might jeopardize the project.

“I don’t know who the end user would be, all I’m being told is it’s one of the big five or six businesses,” Brisbois said. “I’ve asked not to be told that information. I don’t need that information to do my job.”

Besides storing and processing data, data centers are vital to advancing the use of artificial intelligence (AI). Major companies building data centers in Wisconsin include Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, in Beaver Dam, which used an NDA; and Microsoft in Mount Pleasant and Vantage Data Centers in Port Washington, to serve OpenAI and Oracle, which did not.

“I like to be transparent with my board of directors,” Brisbois said. “But did I give a lot of details? No. I thought it was an appropriate time that we were being evaluated, at least initially. Did I need to do that? No. But it’s how I do my job.”

Doug Schauff, the town chair in Cassville, in southwest Grant County, told Wisconsin Watch he attended a meeting about the data center about a week ago. He wouldn’t reveal other details, other than the company involved is seeking 400 or 500 acres in the town.

“Everything is so vague right now,” Schauff said. “They had not contacted land owners. … They wouldn’t give us any definite figures (on power usage), which would be Greek to us anyway.”

The seven major data center projects detailed in the Jan. 26 Wisconsin Watch report were valued at more than $57 billion, including one in the Madison suburb of DeForest. DeForest city officials did not sign an NDA, but kept details of a $12 billion data center proposal quiet for months before announcing it to the public. Amid opposition from residents, the city dropped the project Jan. 27. 

Data center proposals are pending in Kenosha, Menomonie and Janesville, all of which signed NDAs. 

The Janesville City Council has scheduled five informational sessions on an $8 billion data center proposed there. The first is Feb. 9, when the council is also scheduled to consider a proposal from data center opponents that would require a referendum on such large-scale projects.

Republican state lawmakers on Feb. 6 introduced a bill that would prohibit local governments from signing data center NDAs.

Meanwhile, attention is turning to how the state will determine who will pay to provide the massive amounts of electricity that data centers need to operate.

On Feb. 10, the Public Service Commission is scheduled to hold a hearing, which will be livestreamed, on establishing a payment structure for the generation and distribution of electricity needed by “very large customers,” such as data centers.  

A key question is whether data centers will be required to pay entirely, or whether some of those costs will be spread among other residential and other general ratepayers.

Bert Garvin, an executive vice president of We Energies, has said the rate structure proposed by the utility to the PSC will protect general ratepayers. “While your bills may go up for other cost-of-service reasons, we can assure all our customers your bills aren’t going up because of” data centers, he said at a public forum last week.

At the same forum, Tom Content, executive director of the consumer advocate Citizens Utility Board, said “the devil’s in the details” on how the PSC protects ratepayers. 

“I think it’s really important that these wealthy tech companies have to put up the money and not have to achieve compliance with that some other way,” he said.

Content also alluded to stranded assets — power plants that are shut down while ratepayers are still paying off their debt. He said the PSC must impose “exit fees” stringent enough so that data centers remain financially responsible for new multibillion-dollar power plants, should the AI phenomenon become a “bubble” and data centers shut down early.

Wisconsin Watch reported in December that residential and business utility customers in Wisconsin owe $1 billion for stranded assets — the debt taken on to build and upgrade power plants that have been shut down or are scheduled to be shut down soon.

One challenge in trying to protect ratepayers for the costs of electricity needed for data centers is that the PSC has never faced a surge in electricity demand of this scale. We Energies alone plans to spend $19 billion over five years to meet what is expected to be a doubling of its demand for electricity, largely from the two Milwaukee-area data centers, in Port Washington and Mount Pleasant. 

Nationally, the procedures that regulators use are “not designed for the current level and pace of load growth,” one energy consultant wrote in a December report. 

“As a result, the estimated cost to serve new customers can quickly become outdated and inaccurate,” potentially leading to costs being shifted to other customers, the report said.

The Republican-controlled Assembly on Jan. 20 passed a bill to require that the PSC ensure “that no costs associated with the construction or extension of electric infrastructure that primarily serves a data center are allocated to or recovered from any other customer.” 

No action has been scheduled in the GOP-controlled state Senate. 

Opponents have criticized a “poison pill” provision in the bill they say would severely limit the ability to use renewable energy to power data centers.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has said he likely would not sign the bill.

As Wisconsin weighs who should pay, another possible billion-dollar data center emerges 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 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.

An Amazon Web Services data center is shown situated near single-family homes in Stone Ridge, Va., in 2024. As Americans grow increasingly frustrated over their electricity bills, states are trying to keep the nation’s growing number of data centers from causing higher energy costs for consumers. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

As Americans grow increasingly frustrated over their electricity bills, states are trying to keep the nation’s growing number of data centers from causing higher energy costs for consumers.

For years, many states competed aggressively to land data centers, sprawling campuses full of the computer servers that store and transmit the data behind apps and websites. But many officials are now scrutinizing how those power-hungry projects might affect the electric bills of households, small businesses and other industries.

Oregon last year became one of the first states to enact a law requiring utilities to charge data centers different electric prices than other industries because of how they drive up the cost of energy production and transmission.

“We are now making data centers pay a higher rate commensurate with the amount of energy they’re sucking out of the system,” said Oregon state Rep. Tom Andersen, a Democrat.

Republican and Democratic leaders in at least a dozen states have targeted data centers with separate, higher electric rates to protect other customers. States also are requiring long-term commitments and financial guarantees through collateral before greenlighting infrastructure investments for new data center projects. But lawmakers acknowledge that numerous factors affect energy prices, so targeting data center-specific costs can be complicated.

An increasingly digital world and the rise of energy-intensive artificial intelligence has led to major expansion of data centers: Consultant McKinsey & Company expects companies to spend nearly $7 trillion worldwide on data centers by 2030. But the industry is facing growing scrutiny, from neighbors who don’t want to live near the massive server farms and from residents worried about how data centers will affect their own swelling utility bills.

Delaware legislation that would charge data centers higher rates advanced out of committee last week. On Tuesday, a Florida state Senate committee approved a bill that would create new rate structures for data centers.

In Oklahoma, a Republican state senator has proposed a moratorium on new data centers until late 2029, allowing the state to study how data centers affect utility rates, the environment and property values.

Separate legislation from state Rep. Brad Boles will seek to protect other ratepayers from the costs of data centers. Boles, the Republican chair of the state Energy and Natural Resources Oversight Committee, said his in-the-works measure would ensure data centers pay their fair share.

Boles told Stateline that his constituents are increasingly worried about data centers, with a dozen potential major ones proposed across the state.

“We’re trying to ensure that those data centers pay for their own infrastructure and we don’t shift that cost or burden to everyday Oklahomans,” he said.

In Oregon, Andersen’s legislation created a new rate structure for data centers with long-term contracts and required regulators to separate the costs of those facilities from other ratepayers.

But consumer advocates have already accused the state’s largest utility of trying to skirt the new law by making residential customers pay part of the long-term cost of supplying large data centers in a pending rate case.

Andersen, a member of the state House Committee on Climate, Energy and Environment, said the new rate structure is unlikely to immediately lower consumer bills. Rather, it aims to curb future increases as data centers require more power generation and transmission.

“We’re not going to change the rates that are being currently paid by the ratepayers and the users of the electricity,” he said. “It’s just going to stop future raises.”

The data center boom

Rising utility bills continue to outpace inflation, sparking anger from consumers and more scrutiny from state regulators, governors and lawmakers.

The boom of data centers is frequently cited as a prime reason for rising electricity prices, as their operation requires more power generation, transmission and distribution upgrades. A Bloomberg News analysis in September found wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more for a single month than it did five years ago in areas with significant data center activity.

Data center companies say they aren’t the only reason prices are rising.

“It’s inaccurate to draw a clear line between large load customers like data centers coming online and increases in prices. It’s just not that simple,” said Lucas Fykes, senior director of energy policy and regulatory counsel at the Data Center Coalition, a trade group representing data center owners and users, including Amazon, Meta and Visa.

He said many factors have contributed to higher electricity prices, including extreme weather events and the nation’s aging electric grid.

Fykes said his organization opposes rate structures that treat data centers differently from other large electric users such as industrial sites. The organization is working with regulators as states increasingly implement practices to ensure residents and small businesses aren’t on the hook for big energy investments if major projects including data centers don’t come to fruition.

Fykes said the country is likely just in the “beginning innings” of a longer ramp-up in technology and power needs.

“We are also in a global race to build out data centers, to support AI, to support cloud infrastructure,” he said. “It’s important to make sure that we maintain those assets here in the United States.”

That can pose competing interests for political leaders, including mayors, who have pushed hard to land investments from tech companies.

“We want to be leaders in AI, but we don’t want the infrastructure needed to support it,” said Rusty Paul, the mayor of Sandy Springs, Georgia, in the Atlanta metro area.

He was among several mayors addressing the issue of data centers at last month’s winter meeting of the United States Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C. On a data center panel, Paul acknowledged the effect of Georgia’s tax incentives for data centers: “They’re just popping up everywhere,” he said.

But utilities and regulators are also making long overdue grid upgrades that aren’t tied to data centers, he said.

“The cost of electricity is going up for everybody — and it’s not all related to data centers,” he said.

A bipartisan push

The Georgia Public Service Commission last year created new rules that officials said would protect ratepayers from data center costs. In addition to covering costs of power consumed at their facilities, data centers would have to fund the costs incurred by upstream generation, transmission and distribution, the regulator said.

But lawmakers aren’t convinced those steps went far enough.

State Sen. Chuck Hufstetler, a Republican, is again pushing legislation that would solidify the regulator’s rules into law. His bill would prohibit utilities from passing along the fuel, generation or transmission costs of data centers to other customers.

He told Stateline that the regulator’s rules need to be codified into law so they can’t be weakened later.

Hufstetler said rising utility bills are among the biggest issues facing his constituents. High prices played a key role in November’s election, when Democrats flipped two seats on the state’s Public Service Commission board — the first time Democrats won statewide constitutional office in nearly two decades.

“I saw people with MAGA hats going into the election polling places that were saying, ‘I’m not voting for those guys that raised my rates,’” Hufstetler said, referring to the Republican incumbents who lost.

Hufstetler said the bill, which passed out of committee last year, has already gained major bipartisan support in the Senate, where it is sponsored by multiple Republicans and Democrats.

“This is very bipartisan,” he said. “We have all heard from our people around the state of Georgia.”

The Georgia Public Service Commission agrees in principle with the legislation, said agency spokesperson Tom Krause. But he said the regulator worries about losing flexibility if its rules are written into law.

“Not just this bill, but whenever the legislature codifies a rule that we put in place, we get a little nervous because it can tie our hands in special circumstances,” he said.

A complex challenge

As part of implementing a law enacted last year, Maryland’s utility regulator is weighing a new rate structure for data centers and other large load users.

Proposed regulations would require certain preapproval analysis for heavy power users, a separate rate tariff for data centers and collateral to ensure other ratepayers don’t end up paying for major investments if projects do not come to fruition.

Maryland’s Office of People’s Counsel, an independent agency representing residential utility users, said the proposed changes meet statutory requirements but could do more to protect consumers.

In a news release last month, Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp said residents are already facing higher costs from data centers from outside the state.

“While we push for better federal rules to address those costs, Maryland has the power—and customers a clear need—to make sure data centers within Maryland take on every cost that they impose on residential customers,” Lapp said.

Democratic Gov. Wes Moore recently joined 12 other governors and the Trump administration in urging the regional grid operator, PJM Interconnection, to shield residents and businesses from the infrastructure costs from data centers.

Maryland state Del. Lorig Charkoudian, a Democrat, said the grid operator has for years failed residents in the 13 states plus the District of Columbia that it serves. By delaying renewable energy projects, she said, PJM has kept older, more expensive power plants online, driving up prices as data centers increase demand.

PJM’s board last month rolled out a new data center plan that it said would improve demand forecasting, accelerate the addition of new generation projects and give states a larger role.

Charkoudian said states and utilities struggle to determine just how much power is needed. Data center users shop around for sites, which can cause wildly inaccurate forecasts of just how much power a utility will need.

“It actually has a very concrete financial impact on ratepayers,” she told Stateline. “And so that’s why one of the things that really could make a difference for ratepayers is if we actually had an accurate count of how much we’re getting online.”

While some of those challenges lie outside the realm of state control, Charkoudian said there are things the state can do, including the new rate structure for larger users. She’s crafting a bill encouraging data centers to curtail their power usage during peak periods, such as hot days, when the electrical system is taxed by heavy usage of air conditioners, Maryland Matters reported.

Charkoudian said adding solar generation and storage are low-cost ways to respond quickly to demand. And states can avoid the need for more generation by doubling down on energy efficiency programs that lower demand and also consumer costs.

“The best time to fix this was five years ago,” she said. “The next best time is right this minute, because it’s only going to get worse.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira contributed to this story. Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.