Basking in sunshine
It’s the end of Sunshine Week, a national celebration of public records and open government. In Wisconsin, the fiercest defender of government transparency has long been the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, or FOIC.
Last night, FOIC celebrated its twentieth consecutive year of the Opees, which celebrate efforts to protect the state’s tradition of open government, and pans efforts to stymie them.
This year, data centers popped up repeatedly.
The Midwest Environmental Advocates is this year’s Citizen Openness Advocate for bringing a lawsuit against the city of Racine to force the release of water usage projections in Microsoft’s Mount Pleasant campus.
Another of their lawsuits is against the Public Service Commission, contesting the trade secret status of electrical load data in Meta’s proposed data center in Beaver Dam. That case is still pending.
Wisconsin Watch’s Tom Kertscher has the Open Records Scoop of the Year, highlighting at least four projects where local officials have signed nondisclosure agreements. This week, Kertscher reports on a fifth example: the Town of Beloit signed an NDA with Cambrin LLC in February 2025. Kertscher spoke with WORT earlier this week.
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And the late John Sigwart is the Whistleblower of the Year. The former Port Washington alder revealed that local officials had signed a non-disclosure agreement with a microchip manufacturer and skirted the state’s Open Meetings Law in meeting with developers. In response, Sigwart was summarily stripped of all his committee assignments by the mayor. He passed away in August.
An odd place to hear “bespoke
Earlier this year, I called up state Sen. Romaine Quinn, who had just announced a new bill to protect ratepayers from feeling the costs of data center construction.
“We want data centers. We know it’s the future. We want all sorts of economic development. But we don’t want those of us that are already here to have to pay to upfront the cost of that,” he told me, sounding optimistic that the bill could pass with just a few short months of the legislative session remaining.
Unlike similar Democratic proposals, the bill is nontechnical. AB 840 says that “The Public Service Commission must ensure in its rate-making orders 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.”
The bill moved speedily through the Assembly in January and in February, the Senate held a public hearing on the bill, where Quinn’s co-author, Rep. Shannon Zimmerman, also shared his perspective.
Zimmerman, a Republican from River Falls, is Vice President of Artificial Intelligence at TELUS International, which “helps leading brands to deliver human-aligned AI outcomes for customers.” And Zimmerman framed the bill as a proactive measure to respond to data center concerns while urging us not to see tech companies as nefarious characters. Microsoft, he says, is being a good neighbor.
“It’s more than big tech driving the demand here. If you’re a manufacturer, you’re probably using some form of AI and certainly you’re creating demand on data centers. If you work in health care, you are undoubtedly creating a demand on a data center. If you’re an online personality and make your money off of videos online, you’re creating a demand and deriving a benefit from data centers,” said Zimmerman.
The bill passed out of committee. But the Wisconsin Senate wrapped up its session this week, adjourning until the next legislative session starts in January 2027, without passing the bill. Even Robin Vos is “absolutely sad” about it.
Other bills haven’t passed, including SB 729, introduced by Democrats in December. Among other concerns (water, labor), the bill would require the PSC to define and designate the characteristics of a very large customer class or subclass for each electric utility.
Here, even proposed legislation is lagging behind reality. Earlier in this newsletter, we shared that the Midwest Environmental Advocates is contesting Meta’s claim that its load energy demand in Beaver Dam is a confidential trade secret. A few weeks ago, the PSC required Alliant to resubmit its application for custom electric rates for Meta — this time, hold the redactions, please.
It’s been nearly a year since Alliant and WEPCO have filed applications to formalize relationships with their respective data centers.
In April 2025, Wisconsin Power and Light (parent company Alliant) filed an application for a special contract with “large load” customer Meta in Beaver Dam. Clean Wisconsin, Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group (WIEG), and the Citizens Utility Board are intervening. There’s a lot to page through. The PSC docket number is 6680-TE-115.
In March 2025, WEPCO filed an application to implement Very Large Customer (“VLC”) Tariff and Bespoke Resources Tariffs, which would apply to, in the beginning, Microsoft in southeastern Wisconsin and Vantage in Port Washington. The PSC docket number is 6630-TE-113.
This one has nine intervenors: the Citizens Utility Board, Clean Wisconsin, Cloverleaf, Environmental Law and Policy Center, Microsoft, Sierra Club, Vantage, Walnut Way , and the Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group.
Microsoft and Vantage Data say they want to be fully responsible for the costs. WEPCO says the tariffs are necessary to protect both customers and shareholders from harm — and that without them, “$1.5 billion in capital investment would be allocated to nonparticipating customers under traditional ratemaking.”
Some of the intervenors aren’t convinced the tariff is strong enough to protect all other ratepayers early on. In one proposal, there’d be a 75-25 split, wherein data centers would cover 75 percent of the costs for generation built to serve them, and the other 25 percent would fall on everyone else, spread out among normal ratepayers across the state.
WIEG’s concern is the timing: they argue that costs will hit ratepayers in the early years, in the buildout crunch for electric generation and transmission, before data centers fully use their load. The proposed “safety valve” to correct this wouldn’t kick in until 2033.
WIEG reply brief, pg 5: “The cost to non- non-participating customers will be particularly great over the next few years. American Transmission Company (ATC) is building transmission to serve the VLC [Very Large Customer’s] expected load; unlike how the Commission most commonly provides for a utility’s recovery of construction work in progress for generation construction, for example, ATC’s cost of constructing transmission, its CWIP, will be rate based, years before the transmission is placed into service.
At the same time, the VLCs are themselves ramping up and at the outset have very little load. The result is that current customers will be paying ever-increasing amounts for transmission, at least until the VLC’s expected loads show up. As early as 2027 WEPCO’s annual revenue requirement for new ATC Transmission to serve the VLCs is expected to be $110 million, almost all of which current customers will shoulder until the VLCs’ load grows.”
Walnut Way Conservation Corp, which represents the low-income community of Lindsay Heights in Milwaukee, puts it more bluntly:
Reply brief, pg. 1: “Staff and other intervenors have demonstrated there are still major flaws with WEPCO’s proposal that risk significant harm and unreasonable rates to non participating customers already struggling with high rates, all while enriching WEPCO’s shareholders. The promise of VLCs to pay their own way has not yet been realized and the Commission should reject, or substantially modify, WEPCO’s proposal.”
What do we mean by public convenience?
I’m learning a lot about terminology, so let’s talk about one of those terms. This week: a certificate of public convenience and necessity, or CPCN.
A CPCN is issued by the state utility regulator, the Public Service Commission (PSC). When approved, these certificates allow the building of large power plants and transmission lines. There’s a threshold: if your electric plant generates 100 megawatts or more, or if your transmission line carries 100 kilovolts or more, you need a CPCN. Smaller projects go through get a Certificate of Authority, or CoA.
The PSC has the authority to approve or deny CPCNs. But, if approved, the PSC has the authority over siting. Local government zoning processes don’t apply, though they are factored in.
There are so many dockets to dig into on the PSC’s website. If you’re so inclined, look up application information by utility on the PSC’s website.
That’s how I stumbled across Docket 9835-CE-100, and ended up down a rabbit hole (I did promise that these are reporting notes, after all). This is an application from a company called Foundry Ridge LLC to acquire a CPCN.
Foundry Ridge wants to build a 324-megawatt power plant and a 138-kilovolt transmission line near the town of Darien, in Walworth County. And this… is where things get a little more interesting.
Foundry Ridge is managed by the Chicago-based multinational power merchant Invenergy, the largest privately-held developer and operator of renewable energy projects in North America. Invenergy was founded by Michael Polsky, who began his career designing power plants in the Soviet Ukraine. He’s now among the top billionaires in Illinois, and the University of Chicago’s entrepreneurship center is named for him.
In the ‘90s, Polsky had already found his way to Wisconsin, building a natural gas plant in De Pere operating under the company SkyGen, which was later sold to Calpine Corporation. Fast forward to the early 00’s, and Polsky had founded Invenergy. In recent years, Invenergy has had an infusion of cash of nearly $4 billion from Blackstone, one of the largest private equity firms.
Polsky has been vocal lately about the next frontier of energy, driven by the growth of AI. He called electric generation a bottleneck while speaking on a panel last summer convened by the Center for a New American Security.
“We kind of always assume that electricity is there. We turn the switch on and power is there. I’ve been in the power industry all my career, and, you always fight something. We fought building co-generation plants, we fought building gas plants. Then you fight for renewable, then you fight for the grid.,” said Polsky, while inviting people to think of energy generation as an emergency.
Invenergy is building the Grain Belt Express, an $11 billion, 800-mile transmission line from Kansas to Indiana. And in 2024, the company announced it had signed four contracts with Meta for solar energy in Ohio, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.
In Wisconsin, the company has had eight renewable energy projects approved. The applications follow a similar pattern: the company applies for a CPCN. The PSC states it’s not permitted to take into account the cost of the project, given that it’s proposed by an independent power producer. After approval, the project may be sold to one or more power companies, which is when the PSC evaluates the cost to ratepayers.
In other words: Invenergy builds first, and utilities (and ratepayers) sort out the costs later. Invenergy is what’s called a merchant power plant operator.
Below is a skimmable list of projects from Invenergy. You’ll notice that they are all wind and solar projects. But the Foundry Ridge project, proposed in August 2025, breaks that pattern. This one is a project for a facility powered by natural gas. And from the start, it’s identified a utility partner. The project will be built and maintained by We Energies.
At a prehearing conference last week (video; transcript), a judge allowed the Citizens Utility Board, or CUB, to intervene in the case, despite an objection from Invenergy. CUB argued that the project is among the “large load” bespoke data center tariffs being proposed, which CUB is challenging, on the basis that those costs will be shared by all electric customers.
Invenergy projects so far:
- 🪭 “Forward Wind”
This wind farm is in Fond du Lac and Dodge counties, near the communities of Byron, Brownsville, Knowles, LeRoy, and Farmersville.
It has 86 turbines that generate 129 megawatts of energy. The project began operating in 2008, and Invenergy says it was sold to customers in 2018. - ☀️ “Badger Hollow Solar”
This solar farm generates 300 megawatts of energy in Iowa County, near the communities of Montfort and Cobb, and was completed in two phases. Phase 1 came online in November 2021, and Phase 2 came online in December 2023.
It was proposed in June 2018, and in April 2019, the PSC signed off on new owners: the Wisconsin Electric Power Company, the Wisconsin Public Service Corporation (WPSC), and Madison Gas and Electric (MGE). Badger Hollow is still operated by Invenergy. - 🪭 “Badger Hollow Wind”
Sound familiar? This wind farm will generate up to 118 megawatts in Iowa and Grant Counties, near the communities of Clifton, Eden, Linden, Mifflin, and Wingville, according to its CPCN.
It will have up to 19 turbines, along with a collector substation and transmission tie line. The project made headlines after being approved in September 2025 for being the first wind large-scale wind farm approved in fourteen years. It’s expected to be completed by December 2027. - ☀️ “Paris Center”
This solar farm generates 200 megawatts, with an associated battery energy storage system, on about eight miles of land near the town of Paris in Kenosha County.
It was proposed in 2020, approved in August 2021, and acquired by in March 2022.
It’s now owned by WE Energies, WPSC, and MG&E. The last phase came online in June 2025. - ☀️ “Darien Solar”
This solar farm will generate 250 megawatts near the towns of Bradford in Rock County and Darien in Walworth County, along with a 75 megawatt battery energy storage system.
The project was approved in August 2021, and in January 2023, WEPCO, WPSC, and MG&E were granted approval to acquire ownership interests. In September 2025, the project requested adjusting the siting of the substations to make room for “ for another large electric generating facility.” Presumably, that’s Foundry Ridge. - ☀️“Koshkonong Solar”
This solar farm will generate 300 megawatts near the Village of Christiana and a couple miles south of the Village of Deerfield in Dane County, with an a 165 megawatt battery storage system.
The project was approved in May 2022, and in April 2023, the PSC granted approval for Wisconsin Electric Power Company, Wisconsin Public Service Corporation, and MG&E to acquire ownership interests in it. Is this starting to sound familiar?
Koshkonong Solar is still under construction. According to a newsletter, the site is over halfway finished installing steel posts for solar racks. - ☀️ “High Noon Solar”
This solar farm will generate 300 megawatts near the towns of Leeds, Lowville, Arlington, and Hampden in Columbia County, along with a 165 megawatt battery energy storage system. The project was approved in July 2023.
In April 2023, Koshkonong Solar and High Noon Solar, along with EDP Renewables North America LLC, entered into a multi-party agreement with Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc. (MISO) and American Transmission Company LLC (ATC). - ☀️ “Dawn Harvest”
This solar farm will generate 150 megawatts, along with a battery energy storage system, near the towns of La Prairie and Harmony in Rock County, just to the east of Janesville. The project was approved in May 2025.
News in brief:
- Wisconsin Public Radio: “More than NDAs. Wisconsin communities face scrutiny over data center secrecy.” Philanthropist Lynde Uihlein lives in Port Washington, and made an open records request of the city. The city eventually handed over emails, but maintain they don’t need to turn over the attachments, and a case against them is still pending. (March 17, 2026)
- Wisconsin Public Radio: “Vos warns Wisconsin Senate inaction on data centers could cost GOP votes.” At a luncheon on Tuesday, Vos called the inaction “absolutely sad.” (March 17, 2026)
- WISN: “State Senate ends legislative session without data center bill vote, here’s what that could mean.” While it passed through the Assembly, a Republican bill to protect ratepayers from feeling the cost of data center construction didn’t make it through the Senate this week. The legislature has wrapped up for the year. (March 18, 2026)
- WISN: “24-hour construction at the Port Washington data center is set to end; neighbors say new rules aren’t enough.” Port Washington’s Plan Commission has new rules for exterior construction to address noise and lightning concerns. Watch the meeting here. (March 19, 2026)
- Wisconsin Watch: “Here’s what the data center boom means for Wisconsin’s workforce.” Labor claims get unpacked. I did not expect to see a rotting banana metaphor. (March 19, 2026)
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Data center legislation falters as Wisconsin public opinion shifts.” The Senate takes no action on data centers, as public sentiment measured by the Marquette Law School Poll shows opposition widening. (March 19, 2026)
- Janesville Gazette: DATA center tour: Journalists meet with lawmakers, citizens, environmental groups. Journalists from across the US are on a tour of Wisconsin data centers, and heard concerns from community members in Greenleaf, Janesville, and Port Washington. (March 19, 2026)
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “What to know about the huge electric power demands from Wisconsin data centers.” Data centers are slowing decarbonization, says an expert at the University of Chicago. (March 20,2026)
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “Wisconsin regulators approve two new solar projects for $360 million.” The PSC has signed off on We Energies solar farms in Columbia County. (March 20, 2026)
Events in brief:
- Wed, March 25: Racine and Kenosha Counties Farm Bureaus will hold an event on data centers and the rural landscape. Veterans Terrace in Burlington, 6-8pm, more here.
- Wed, April 1: Citizen Action of Wisconsin will hold a town hall on data centers and utility rates. Virtual; register here.
- Tues, April 14: Sustain Dane will host a breakfast series in Madison on data centers and a sustainable future (note: QTS has maintained its $1.5 million commitment to UW researchers on data center sustainability). Register.
- Tues, April 14: Dane County’s advisory committee on data centers will meet.
- April 23-24: Labor organizer Ric Urrutia, co-host of the Wisconsin Labor Podcast, will present in Sheboygan and Manitowoc on what he terms the “interlocking corporate and banking interests of ICE and data center owners.” More info.
