WEC Energy Group in Talks for 400-Megawatt Data Center Project in Wisconsin

WEC Energy Group, the parent company of We Energies and Wisconsin Public Service Corporation, is negotiating with an undisclosed data center developer for a new hyperscale project in Wisconsin that would add 400 megawatts of demand to its system, the utility announced during its October 29 earnings call.

The potential project would represent a significant addition to WEC Energy Group's growing data center load, coming on top of the campuses already under construction in Mount Pleasant and Port Washington. CEO Scott Lauber declined to identify the developer, specify the location, or confirm whether the project would comprise a single site or multiple facilities, saying only that sites within both We Energies' and Wisconsin Public Service's service territories are under consideration. "You've got to make sure you have a community that's excited about it and interested in it," Lauber said during the call. "You've got to make sure the transmission lines are available, the capacity – there's a lot of factors going in." He added that more details would be announced in the future.

At 400 megawatts, the project would rank below the scale of Microsoft's Mount Pleasant campus and the Port Washington facilities being developed by Vantage, Oracle and OpenAI, which could draw up to 3.5 gigawatts at full build-out – nearly nine times more power. It would nonetheless exceed the 220-megawatt Meta data center under construction in Beaver Dam and would be equivalent to powering more than 200,000 homes. We Energies' new special electric rate, modified and approved by state regulators in April, applies to data centers using at least 100 megawatts and is designed to shield existing customers from data center-related energy costs, though Wisconsin Public Service does not currently have a comparable rate structure in place. It remains unclear whether the project includes potential expansion beyond the five-year window of WEC Energy Group's capital plan.

The disclosure came alongside an updated five-year capital plan under which WEC Energy Group expects to invest $47.5 billion in new capital projects between 2027 and 2031, an increase of $10 billion, or 26%, from its prior 2026-30 estimates. Projected transmission investments also rose by $1.2 billion, with WEC Energy Group holding a 60% ownership stake in American Transmission Co., the power line company serving eastern Wisconsin. "The majority of this increase is being driven and therefore paid for by our very large customers" – data centers, Lauber said. We Energies' data center build-out has already begun, with billions of dollars in newly approved solar, wind, natural gas and battery storage facilities, and additional projects pending regulatory approval.