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.
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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.
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.
Electrical power lines near Trempealeau, Wis., Aug. 11, 2017. (Tony Webster / Wikimedia Commons)
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.
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.
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.”
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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.
Laborers and construction workers are needed in high numbers to build data centers like this one in Beaver Dam, Wis., experts said. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
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.
“The data center market is booming,” says Chief Operating Officer Erik Thompson of Modular Power & Data, who is shown in Cudahy, Wis., Feb. 25, 2026. He is standing next to rows of switchboards, which will be used to help power data centers. On the day of Wisconsin Watch’s visit, 42 of the switchboards were set to be sent out. (Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
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.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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.
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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.
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.
Beaver Dam residents weigh in as second data center proposal looms. (Video by Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
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.
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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.”
Employees at Modular Power & Data work on modular power systems in Cudahy, Wis., Feb. 25, 2026. (Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
Copper is shown at Modular Power & Data in Cudahy, Wis., Feb. 25, 2026. It’s used in electrical components that help power data centers. (Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
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.
A generator for use in a data center manufactured by Waukesha-based Generac is shown at its plant in Oshkosh, Wis. (Courtesy of Generac)
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.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
What happens when residents near proposed data center sites have no idea what’s being built in their communities? Wisconsin Watch’s Tom Kertscher recently followed up on a tip discussing nondisclosure agreements in cities like Beaver Dam. In this video, Wisconsin Watch also met with community members Prescott Balch and comedian Charlie Berens to discuss these issues. (Video by Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
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.
Wisconsin Watch reporter Tom Kertscher joined Charlie Berens on “Old Fashioned Interview” to discuss his recent reporting on data centers and their impact on Wisconsin — from rising utility costs to residents being unaware when projects are proposed in their communities. (Video by Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
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.
Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletters for original stories and our Friday news roundup.
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