In a win for consumers
the Wisconsin
Public Service Commission
just ruled that
existing electricity customers
should not pay a single cent
to subsidize the service
of data centers.
I was frankly surprised.
I've had a good feeling
that we were going to get
some of what we asked
for in terms of
significant changes
to what the proposal was
but we got the vast majority
of our changes, or changes
that addressed our concerns.
They really
the commissioners really
sent a message
even though they can't
control every cent
they sent a message that
every dollar needs
to be accounted for
and every
as one of the
commissioners put it
'Every cent should be paid for
by the tech companies.'
What else stood out for you
from the PSC on this case?
The fact that the data centers
will be on the hook for
100% of the new power plants.
There was one scenario where
other customers
small businesses, homeowners
renters would be on
and other businesses
would be on the hook
for up to 25% of the cost
of new power plants.
That's not a small number.
We Energies has already
gotten approval for over
almost $2 billion in projects
and has another $6 billion
in the queue.
So, a quarter of that
a quarter of that would have
been a couple billion dollars
on the hook
that customers would have
been responsible for.
So that was a big
the biggest change
and one that
we really appreciated.