Good morning.
Sunday in Whitewater will see thunderstorms with a high of 78. Sunrise is 5:54 and sunset is 8:05 for 14 hours 11 minutes of daylight. The moon is a waning crescent with 13.5 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1810, Napoleon annexes Westphalia as part of the First French Empire.
This libertarian blogger has argued for the minimum number of data center regulations. See Assembly Passes Limited Data Center Regulations. Mine is a minority view these days — there is growing support across the political spectrum for more regulations, including a moratorium on their construction. (A member of the Whitewater Common Council recently observed that, with data centers and with Flock Safety, the political coalitions in opposition are a mixture of left and right. That’s true: to think that opposition in either case comes only from one side of politics is at best ignorant and at worst willfully so.)
Although allowing each community to decide whether to permit data centers would be my preference, recognition of the rule of law requires that companies act within statutes, regulations, and ordinances. For that reason, a contract between Microsoft and We Energies cannot bind Microsoft to contractual terms that violate state Public Service Commission regulations:
Microsoft’s new 15-year electric service contract for its Mount Pleasant data center includes a provision Wisconsin regulators previously rejected.
Signed last month, the agreement with We Energies specifies that power plants built or purchased to serve data centers must be located in eastern Wisconsin or Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission (PSC) voted in May to remove those geographic constraints, which critics argued would cut off Microsoft’s access to abundant wind power generated elsewhere in the Midwest and Great Plains.
We Energies says it will follow the commission’s order — as opposed to the contract’s language — while it works with the commission to resolve the discrepancy. In the meantime, some observers question how an outdated version of a high-stakes contract made it this far.
[…]
The PSC-approved rate structure allows large data center operators to “subscribe” to new power plants, picking up the bill for purchasing or constructing them in exchange for the right to use the electricity they generate and revenue from selling surplus electricity on the wholesale market.
We Energies argued that those plants should be located as close as possible to the data centers they would serve.
Longer distances would increase the risk of grid failures disrupting data center operations, WEC Energy Group Director of Planning Jody Arendt told the PSC in January. WEC Energy Group is We Energies’ holding company.
The local power plants would be within the territory of the American Transmission Company (ATC), a transmission utility in which We Energies owns a majority stake — a relationship that could simplify coordinating repairs and upgrades, Arendt said.
See Paul Kiefer, We Energies says Microsoft won’t be held to contract terms that conflict with state regulators’ order (‘We Energies says Microsoft won’t be held to contract terms that conflict with state regulators’ order’), August 6, 2026.
We Energies wants to limit Microsoft via contract, but that limitation cannot be enforced in contravention of state regulations. We Energies now declares that it won’t enforce the geographical limitation on where Microsoft gets power, but the current contractual provision never had any lawful prospect of enforcement.
As a matter of sensible policy, Microsoft should be able to seek energy sources where it wants, at the best price, including renewable energy sources. The limitation that We Energies sought from Microsoft was a counterproductive (and self-serving) restriction on Microsoft’s freedom to seek suppliers where and as it wishes.
Here’s a case where the Public Service Commission had a better grasp of supplier selection than a public utility.
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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A New Ethics Ordinance and a Whitewater Comparative Analysis.
Video shows ancient Roman shipwreck with hundreds of large jars discovered off Sicily: