This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/port-washington-data-center-plans-put-spotlight-on-wisconsin-power-supply/

Huge proposal is just one of several in the works for southeastern Wisconsin

Port Washington’s announcement of another billion-dollar data center project in southeastern Wisconsin is focusing attention on the challenge of meeting the voracious energy needs of this new economic opportunity.

If fully realized, a 2,000-acre data center along the city’s north border in what is now the Town of Port Washington would rival in scope and economic impact the ever-growing Microsoft data center project now under construction in and around Mount Pleasant.

Just the first phase of the Mount Pleasant project will need electricity equivalent to what’s needed to serve 300,000 homes, according to a story published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Thursday.

The Mount Pleasant center, when completed, would be the largest single user of electricity in Wisconsin, the newspaper said.

At the same time, plans are moving forward for a data center with four buildings on roughly 240 acres northeast of state highway 142 just west of I-94 in Kenosha, according to documents filed with the Kenosha Plan Commission in November by Navix Engineering of Bellevue, Wash.

Data centers nationwide used 4.4% of all the electricity generated in 2023 in the United States. They are expected to use more than double that percentage by 2028, according to a report recently released by the U.S. Department of Energy.

As the Badger Institute reported in August, Microsoft, one of the nation’s leading artificial intelligence innovators, operates more than 300 data centers in 34 countries. Since it announced ambitious plans for Mount Pleasant last summer, Microsoft has made additional land purchases, pushing its data center footprint past 1,300 acres and its estimated investment well past $1 billion, according to the Racine County Economic Development Corp.

It says something about the Port Washington proposal that it was made by Cloverleaf Infrastructure, a Houston-based developer not of software or AI technology but of infrastructure built around securing the energy necessary to power such centers.

Brian Janous, who started Cloverleaf just last February, is the former head of energy at Microsoft. Many of his staff came from Microsoft. Janous has said Cloverleaf is one of the new players working with a data center industry reliant on huge amounts of energy and with utilities worrying about how to provide it.

The Port Washington proposal is the first project Cloverleaf has made public since it secured $300 million from private equity investors NGP and Sandbrook Capital in July, according to its website.

The Milwaukee 7 Partnership for Economic Development, or M7, and We Energies, which operates a 1,150 megawatt natural gas-fueled generating station in Port Washington, identified Cloverleaf as a potential partner with the city.

It was that natural gas power generation that prompted Cloverleaf to enter into a preliminary agreement with We Energies to provide the necessary power for a data center without any additional burden on the ratepayer, said Aaron Bilyeu, Cloverleaf’s chief development officer.

Cloverleaf intends to develop the Port Washington site and sell to a buyer such as Microsoft or Meta who will complete the data center to its specifications.

There is no announcement of the Port Washington proposal, nor are there any names of specific buyers or locations of other potential projects on Cloverleaf’s website. The company did not respond to an email asking for further detail on Port Washington.

There is no buyer yet, but it would be a company familiar with operating large data centers, Bilyeu told the Port Washington Common Council in a presentation Tuesday night.

In response to inquiries, Gale Klappa, M7 co-chairman and chairman of We Energies owner WEC Energy Group, said in a statement that he believed the Cloverleaf development would have a ripple effect for years to come on the economy of southeastern Wisconsin.

“The announcement of Cloverleaf’s consideration is another sign that the industry recognizes our region for our skilled talent base and our reliable infrastructure,” Klappa said.

The added demand for electricity from data center development comes amid a revival of interest in nuclear power in Wisconsin and more broadly in the nation. The shutdown of large coal-burning plants has led operators of the country’s electrical grid to warn about adequate supply, especially as utilities rely more heavily on intermittent sources such as wind and solar installations. Meanwhile, the prospect of smaller, mass manufactured modular reactors and other advanced forms of nuclear generation have led some utilities, including a supply cooperative in western Wisconsin, to look at the feasibility of new nuclear power plants.

Cloverleaf intends to present its plan to the city within the next 60 days, and that it would like to begin construction in the fall and complete the first stage of the center in three years or less, Bilyeu said.

Port Washington Mayor Ted Neitzke told those in attendance not to get ahead of themselves, that there were many specifics that would be revealed in Cloverleaf’s plan. The plan will need a public hearing and public input.

“We’re at step one of 1,000,” Neitzke said.

Neither Neitzke nor Dan Benning, president of the common council, responded to email requests for an interview. But it was clear from statements they issued that both were excited about the prospects for a data center in Port Washington.

Neitzke said, “A data center will boost tax revenue to help fund our schools, emergency services and infrastructure without fundamentally disrupting the great things we love about living here.”

“Every conversation we have had in the early stages of this process has made us confident that a data center, built responsibly with accountability and transparency as our top priorities, can provide long-term benefits for our city’s economy without significantly changing our daily life here in Port Washington,” Benning said.

There is a nexus between Cloverleaf and the other data center developments in southeastern Wisconsin that speaks to how rapidly the data center industry is scaling up to meet the needs for data storage and energy generation, particularly for AI.

The home base of Navix Engineering, the principal in the Kenosha data center project, Bellevue, is home of Microsoft Technology Centers, and Navix has been the primary engineer for several Microsoft data centers.

Like Cloverleaf, Navix is developing the infrastructure for a data center operator whose name has not been disclosed because of a nondisclosure agreement it has with the City of Kenosha.

Since the deal was announced, the international engineering company Langan, with its headquarters in Parsippany, N.J., acquired Navix. Kenosha city officials did not respond to an email asking whether the acquisition changes anything about the data center plan.

The next step in Port Washington is for the town board to decide on whether to rescind a no-annexation agreement made with the city in 2004. The town board met Monday to discuss the agreement in a session closed to the public.

The board took no action after coming back into the open session.

Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute.

Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.

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