Special City Council Session: Alliant Energy Data Center Energy Presentation - February 9, 2026
Special City Council Workshop: Alliant Energy Presentation on Data Center Energy & Rates
This special session workshop on February 9, 2026, was the first in a series of workshops addressing data center topics. The 30-minute presentation by Alliant Energy focused on how electricity is generated, transmitted, delivered, and how rates are set in Wisconsin, with specific emphasis on dispelling misconceptions about energy costs associated with large industrial customers such as data centers. The session included a 15-minute question-and-answer period for council members only. No votes or decisions were taken; the meeting adjourned at approximately 5:59 PM.
Presentation & Discussion
- Alliant Energy Representative: Becky Vaughn (identified as President of the Wisconsin Energy Group; note that the agenda listed "Becky Volk" but the transcript uses "Becky Vaughn"—a discrepancy). She emphasized that Alliant Energy is agnostic about customer type and legally obligated to serve any customer within its territory. She explained the role of MISO (Midcontinent Independent System Operator) as the regional transmission operator balancing supply and demand across 15 states and Manitoba.
- Key points from the presentation:
- In Wisconsin, utilities are regulated monopolies with rates set by the Public Service Commission (PSC) to ensure reliable service at reasonable cost and utility financial viability.
- Fixed costs make up the majority of customer bills; attracting new customers helps spread these costs and can lower rates for all.
- For large load customers (e.g., data centers), Alliant negotiates contracts that require the customer to pay for any dedicated infrastructure (e.g., substations) and provide financial security (letters of credit) to protect other ratepayers if the customer leaves early.
- Two independent studies (Lawrence Berkeley National Lab and Charles Rivers Associates) found that states with strong electricity load growth often have lower or declining real prices, and recent rate changes are driven by localized factors, not data center growth.
- Councilmember Questions:
- Vice President Squire asked about rate impacts across the service area. Ms. Vaughn confirmed that a new large customer anywhere in Alliant's Wisconsin territory affects rates equally across all customers in the state.
- A councilmember (unidentified) asked about the treatment of infrastructure costs and risks if a data center closes. Ms. Vaughn explained that Alliant requires contractual guarantees from large load customers to cover specific investments, unlike standard customers who can leave without penalty.
- Another councilmember asked about potential bias given Ms. Vaughn's prior service on the PSC and the revolving door between regulators and utilities. Ms. Vaughn noted her 20+ year career in the industry, with less than a quarter spent at the commission, and stated she is proud of her record.
Meeting Transcript
I'd like to call this city council workshop for uh tonight uh to order, please. Uh can we have a roll call? Uh Vice President Squire. Here. Councilmember Miller. Here. Councilmember Williams. Here. Councilmember Erdman. Here. Councilmember Nino. Here. Councilmember Cass. Here. President Burdick is running behind, so we do have a quorum. So go ahead. All right. I'll turn this over to City Manager Laner to introduce our schedule and the people are going to be presenting. So, Kevin. Yeah, thank you very much. So, this is the first of uh several workshops that we're gonna have as it relates to the subject of data centers. Um I am very happy to have uh Becky Volk from Alliant Energy here. Uh she is the president of their Wisconsin Energy Group. Um, and this is the first of five to address uh various topics. Uh one of the ones uh that has been a significant topic has been uh energy and uh the use of energy at a data center, and specifically uh how uh rates are established and how they relate to the average consumer here in the city in Jadinesville and in the surrounding region. So the way the format's gonna work is we have a 30-minute uh presentation roughly and then uh 15 minutes uh for the city council to ask any questions of our folks from Alliance. Um again, thank you for the attention and thank you for being here uh today. So, with that, I'll have uh Becky come up, introduce herself. Thank you very much. Okay, thank you. Can everybody hear me? Okay, great. Um, thank you for having me. I am Becky Vaughn with Alliant Energy, um, and I'm really here to talk about energy, how it's generated, how it's transmitted, how it's delivered to our customers, and then how rates are set. How rates are set first by the utility and then how that process works through the public service commission of Wisconsin. So I really my interest here is to be available as a resource to answer any questions that you have. Um, the rest of our team at Alliance stands ready to address any questions or concerns. Um, and just I just want it to be very clear that we are agnostic when it comes to who our energy customers are, right? So because we're a regulated monopoly, those that live in our service territory don't have a choice who they're provide who their provider is, right? Similarly, we don't get to choose our customers. So if a customer comes into our service territory and they call us and say, hello, Alliant, we need electricity at such and such an address, we have a legal obligation to serve that customer. So I just want to make sure that we're all kind of working from the same set of data and that we're really clear and transparent about what we do. We provide electricity and gas to our customers, nearly a million between Wisconsin and Iowa, electric customers, and about 450,000 gas customers also split between Wisconsin and Iowa. And so once it's really important that we also understand kind of the basics, and I'm not gonna oversimplify it. That's a big difference too when we're talking about energy markets and things that are happening happening across the country. So when we read or hear some of the national narrative about where our electricity prices going, what about affordability for electricity? It's really important that we all level set and understand how we operate in the state of Wisconsin. So the way that it works in other states like California, like Virginia, like Washington DC, is going to be different than what works and how we operate here in Wisconsin. And I think that's a really important thing for everybody to keep in mind that when you're talking about electricity, it's all very local. It's all very dependent on what market you're sitting in.
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