Wisconsin PSC / 100% cost recovery + 100 MW trigger + 15-yr contract

Plain-English framing: a 'tariff' is the legally-approved schedule of rates and terms a regulated utility uses to serve a class of customer. When a utility wants to serve a giant new customer type, it usually files a custom tariff with the state commission. The fight in every state is who pays for the new generation capacity needed — the new customer (data center) or all the existing ratepayers (residents and small businesses). Wisconsin's PSC took We Energies' filing and tightened it in the customer-protective direction on three axes at once. The 100% cost-allocation is the financial headline: a 1.5 GW campus that previously could externalize 25% of new-plant costs onto Milwaukee residents now bears the full cost itself. That changes the levelized cost of power for the project materially — back-of-envelope on a $2B / GW gas plant that's an extra $500M of CapEx the project now carries. The 100 MW threshold is the design lever other commissions will copy. We Energies filed 75 MW. The PSC chose 100 MW. That number now becomes the precedent the next utility's filing in (say) Indiana, Ohio, or Iowa has to argue against. Expect to see '100 MW' in subsequent tariff dockets nationwide. The 15-year contract minimum is the under-rated provision. It locks the data center to the load and the utility to the generation for the term, which both protects ratepayers from stranded-asset risk AND constrains the data center's ability to move workloads / unwind a site. For developers used to 10-year commitments, this is a real CapEx-flexibility tax. Sources: WTMJ 'We Energies data center rate plan gets approval, with major changes' (April 26); Wispolitics 'PSC ruling requires data centers to cover costs of new We Energies power generation'; Data Center Knowledge 'Wisconsin's Data Center Tariff Signals a New Regulatory Baseline'; WisBusiness 'Regulators reject proposal to have ratepayers share data center power plant costs'; Urban Milwaukee 'State Regulators Change We Energies' Data Center Rates to Protect Customers'; Clean Wisconsin 'State regulators make substantial modifications to We Energies' AI data center tariff plan'.

Primary source · Wisconsin PSC / WTMJ / Data Center Knowledge / Wispolitics ↗