Wisconsin regulators voted Thursday to send the American Transmission Company (ATC) back to the drawing board as the utility attempts to build the grid infrastructure needed to plug in the Port Washington data center. The Public Service Commission (PSC) Chair Summer Strand called the move a “reasonable reset” after ATC repeatedly adjusted the project’s design, which commission staff and ratepayer advocates argued left both regulators and the public with a muddy picture of a grid expansion expected to cost well over $1 billion.
Background
ATC, which owns and operates transmission lines in the eastern half of Wisconsin, is on the hook to connect the soon-to-open Port Washington data center to the electrical grid. The company approached the PSC last September for permission to break ground on the project as early as this past May. Its initial application outlined a more than $1.3 billion infrastructure package, including a high-voltage transmission line and five new substations spread across Fond du Lac, Ozaukee, Sheboygan and Washington counties, needed to “reliably serve” the new data center by December 2027.
ATC has since been vocal about the urgency of the infrastructure buildout needed to support the data center boom. The company is part of a coalition of utilities asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to speed up regional transmission projects needed to serve data centers by suspending competitive bidding, arguing that “bureaucratic red tape” presents a national security risk as the U.S. competes with China for “dominance” in the artificial intelligence race.
Revisions and Concerns
Meanwhile, the utility has repeatedly adjusted its plans since December, redesigning proposed routes and adding a set of temporary bypass lines needed to avoid outages during construction. The PSC is responsible for reviewing those changes and giving other parties, namely ratepayer advocates and affected landowners, an opportunity to weigh in. Some commission staff sounded the alarm as the pile of revisions — and questions — grew.
Ratepayer advocates generally avoid wading into fights over transmission line routes and substation siting, which Wisconsin Citizens Utility Board (CUB) Regulatory Affairs Director Corey Singletary described as a “zero-sum proposition” in which a victory for one group of landowners means shifting construction impacts onto another group of landowners. But CUB raised concerns that ATC’s revisions make it difficult to forecast the project’s cost.
Decision and Next Steps
All three commissioners aired matching frustrations during a Thursday afternoon hearing on ATC’s infrastructure plans before concurring on what Commissioner Marcus Hawkins called the “least-bad option” — requiring ATC to resubmit its application and restarting the case’s 180-day clock. ATC has not indicated when it will resubmit its application as of Thursday afternoon, nor whether the December 2027 deadline is still within reach.
Original reporting: Wisconsin Watch — read the source article.
