Wisconsin Makes Data Centers Pay the Whole Bill for Their Power Plants

The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin unanimously approved We Energies' tariff for data center-scale customers on April 24, but only after rewriting the parts that would have shifted costs onto everyone else. The commission removed an option under which data centers would have paid 75% of the cost of new generation, lengthened the minimum contract to 15 years and cut the size threshold for the tariff from 500 MW to 100 MW. "Existing Wisconsin customers should not pay a single cent to subsidize the service of data centers, or very large customers," Commissioner Kristy Nieto said during the more than six-hour meeting, WPR reported.

We Energies filed the Very Large Customer and Bespoke Resources tariffs in March 2025, in docket 6630-TE-113, in response to large data center customers entering its territory. Under the utility's design, very large customers would fund and subscribe to portions of new generation projects, or to entire projects. Strand said that rejecting the tariff outright "would harm existing customers," because the utility's existing large customer rates do not include protections designed for data centers. "We need to do everything within our jurisdiction to make sure data center customers will pay their own way, fully and transparently, and other customers will be held harmless," Nieto said.

Wisconsin joins a growing list of states requiring data centers to carry the cost of the infrastructure built for them, but the details set it apart. "The decisions we're making here today will not be limited to this docket," Nieto said. The commission's final order will be posted in the coming weeks, followed by the utility's revised tariff and its approach to transmission cost allocation with American Transmission Co.