Business leaders from companies across industries gathered Tuesday afternoon at BizTimes Media’s Powering Progress event to discuss the future of energy infrastructure in southeastern Wisconsin and what may come from the boom of data center development in the state and region.

The event, held at Discovery World’s Pilot House, attracted over 200 guests and featured three panel discussions analyzing the supply and demand of energy and the draw from data center development, as well as operational insights from local manufacturers supplying materials for the projects.

The first discussion was conducted among leaders from The Boldt Company, Vantage Data Centers, Alliant Energy, and Reinhart Boerner Van Deuren. Panelists provided background on ongoing projects in the region as well as insights into each projects’ status and the future of data center development in southeastern Wisconsin.

Currently, Vantage Data Centers, Microsoft and Meta are investing several billion dollars into large data center campuses in Port Washington, Beaver Dam and Mount Pleasant.

Here are some key takeaways from the first panel:

• Energy demands are up significantly from three years ago, according to Coleman Peiffer, senior manager of data center services at Alliant Energy. A typical project proposed five years ago demanded one to three megawatts of power. The “data center era” beginning in 2024 began yielding requests for one gigawatt of power, which is equal to 1,000 megawatts, Peiffer said.
• Alliant Energy’s growth is 90% related to data center development.
• Wisconsin is playing catch-up for data center development, said Dale Lewis, director of data centers at The Boldt Company. Wisconsin is a tertiary market, and the state is figuring out how to move at the same rate of speed as first-tier markets (Texas, Virginia, Chicago, Atlanta) in a shorter period of time.
• Over five billion people around the world are online which is driving the need for more data centers, according to Kaitlin Monaghan, senior director of public policy, North America at Vantage Data Centers. Both traditional cloud storage and AI storage are in increasing demand.
• Vantage is seeking premium speed to market and cost of ownership rates in its projects across five continents. Wisconsin’s sales tax incentive program, its workforce, and the ability to partner with local utility companies like We Energies made the state attractive to Vantage.
• Wisconsin’s climate is also attractive as the centers need less cooling resources during the winter months, a notable issue in the operation of data centers.
• A game-changing tax exemption passed by state legislation in July 2023 greenlit the entry of Microsoft into the southeastern Wisconsin market. The new rule exempt data center developments from paying taxes on the sale and storage used exclusively for the development, construction, renovation or repair of a qualified data center.
• “We were open for business the second we passed that sales and use tax (exemption),” said Peiffer.
• “Every community has a pocket of resistance,” said Lewis.
• To quell community fears and resistance, Lewis has become active at municipal meetings talking with citizens and being transparent about data center developments and energy usage.
• “This is the reshoring of manufacturing in the U.S.,” said Debby Tomczyk, shareholder and co-chair of the data centers group at Reinhart.
• As for future developments, Lewis predicts a decline in hyperscale development, with potentially one or two more massive campuses entering the Wisconsin market in the next few years. Small data center development will increase.

Read more at the BizTimes.