Wisconsin Transmission Company is seeking federal intervention months after the Midwest’s regional grid operator awarded a major project to a startup competitor. The ATC, which owns and operates transmission lines across eastern and central Wisconsin, has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to force the grid operator to either redo its bidding process or award the full eastern Wisconsin project to ATC.

The request escalates a protracted fight over who gets to make billions of dollars in new transmission investments – Wisconsin based utilities or out of state investor groups. The race to serve energy-hungry data centers has raised the stakes, and ATC’s request is intertwined with plans to connect a massive data center campus in Port Washington to the grid by the end of next year.

Wisconsin’s latest high-capacity transmission buildout began in 2022, when the nonprofit Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO) approved $10 billion in upgrades across the Upper Midwest. Another round of approvals in 2024 brought the total projected price tag to roughly $32 billion. The upgrades are a core part of MISO’s effort to improve grid reliability and connect population centers to abundant electricity from renewable sources, especially from wind farms on the Great Plains.

Included in the buildout are a set of transmission lines and substations circling Milwaukee, stretching south to the Illinois border and north to Fond du Lac and Sheboygan. MISO originally expected the projects to enter service by 2033.