Comment by VoidWarranty
10 days ago
Wisconsin runs mostly on coal power plants. It's a terrible place to build data centers.
My guess is that the locals have proven themselves easily dazzled by the contract dollar amounts and arent thinking about the future. Remember the FoxConn debacle? That was WI.
Natural gas, not coal. From Wikipedia [0], "The electrical energy generation mix in 2024 was 40.7% natural gas, 31.8% coal, 15.5% nuclear, 4.5% solar, 3% wind, 2.9% hydroelectric, 1.4% biomass (including refuse-derived fuel), and 0.2% other." The new generation capacity being added is 1.4 GW natural gas and 1.1 GW solar [1]. New coal plants aren't economical under any reasonable market assumptions anywhere in the US.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_Wisc...
[1] https://www.wpr.org/news/we-energies-add-3gw-electric-grid-d...
I was about to ask where they plan on getting the extra power. They are anti solar and wind, so they will either need to burn coal or import it or both (or change the laws!)