This month, the Wisconsin Public Service Commission is expected to release price rates for hyperscale data center companies. The issue of who foots the bill for the energy use of these data centers is just one element of the growing concern over the flood of tech interest in building data centers in our state. To talk about hyperscale data center energy use and how regular consumers can hold tech companies accountable, host Douglas Haynes is in conversation with Tom Content of the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin and local journalist, Chali Pittman, whose latest essay on data centers is available from Isthmus.

The term “data center” is broad and encompass the hyperscale projects undertaken by Meta, Microsoft, and other tech companies. But there are a number of smaller data centers around the state that many people might not know about, says Pittman. All require constant power and cooling, but no where near the scale of their hyperscale counterparts.

Hyperscale data centers use more power and take up more land. Pittman and Content discuss how tech companies go about buying land and how Wisconsin legislators opened the door to new proposals when they created a tax incentive in the state budget. Content says that we need state-level guides and frameworks to address the issue of data centers and economic development.

Content’s organization wants to see the Public Service Commission set rules in a way that will protect all customers, not just the utility or tech companies. He says the CUB has seen utility bills increasing at a rate higher than inflation. They also talk about the importance of zoning and how local groups are successfully keeping hyperscale data centers out of their neighborhoods.

Tom Content leads the Citizens Utility Board of Wisconsin, the nonpartisan independent nonprofit that serves as the consumer advocate for utility customers in proceedings that affect what Wisconsinites pay for power as well as the path the state takes on its energy future. Tom is currently vice president of the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates. Before joining CUB 9 years ago, Tom was a journalist covering energy, utilities, and sustainability for more than 20 years at the Green Bay Press-Gazette and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Chali Pittman is a freelance journalist based in Madison. You can read her reporting on data centers in Wisconsin on Substack.

Featured image of a Google data center in Iowa via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

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