A typical Wisconsin Electric Power Co., the Milwaukee utility owned by WEC Energy Group household will pay about $7 to $8 more a month in 2027 and another $6 to $7 more in 2028, after the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin voted on Thursday, Nov. 6, to approve a two-year electric rate increase. The utility serves more than 1.2 million electric customers, so the order reaches well over a million accounts.
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Regulators approved less than the company asked for, and the arguments over how much less ran for roughly 10 hours before the vote. The result is the sixth straight annual increase since 2020.
The 3.9% and 3.5% steps against the request
Wisconsin Electric asked for base electric increases of 4.6% in 2027 and 4.5% in 2028, according to Wisconsin Public Radio. The commission cut those to 3.9% and 3.5%. Wisconsin Watch puts the approved total at about 7% over the two years, against about 9% overall, including 16% for residential customers, in the request.
The company’s own rate filing summary, lodged April 1 as docket 5-UR-112, had forecast about $13 a month in 2027 and $8 to $9 in 2028 for a residential electric customer. The approved monthly figures are well under the first of those. The return on equity, the profit rate built into bills, fell to 9.5% from the 9.9% the utility requested, which Wisconsin Watch says will save ratepayers roughly $60 million over two years. Walmart had called the request unjustified, and the Citizens Utility Board had urged cutting it by nearly a percentage point.
Solar overruns and $1 billion in retired plants
Cost overruns drew some of the sharpest questions. The Kenosha County solar and battery project was approved in 2022 at $433 million and finished nearly 40% over that figure. The commission allowed full recovery but barred profit on $166 million of unapproved spending. Two more solar projects, Darien and Koshkonong, ran 35% and 42% over budget and will be revisited in the next rate case.
About $1 billion is still owed on retired plants. Commissioners stretched the recovery timeline by six years, which lowers monthly payments, and limited shareholder profit on the retired plants. The Wisconsin Industrial Energy Group estimates savings of at least $30 million by 2028. Commissioner Marcus Hawkins said leaders had chosen to put their head in the sand on overrun risk. Commissioner Kristy Nieto argued that treating retired plants as though they were still used and useful is unfair to ratepayers.
The return on equity looks different for the biggest new customers. Wisconsin Watch reports that the typical return is 9.8% and rises to roughly 10.5% or more for data-center infrastructure. Oracle, a partner in the Project Lighthouse campus in Port Washington, agreed last month to subscribe to a share of Point Beach Nuclear Plant output, a deal still awaiting commission approval that the utility estimates would save other ratepayers about $300 million in fuel costs over five years. Transmission charges are mostly a federal matter, with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission weighing a proposal from American Transmission Company that Microsoft opposes.
The sister utility fared differently. Wisconsin Public Service, according to Wisconsin Public Radio, received 0.3% for 2027 and 2.9% for 2028, and the commission removed WEC Energy Group board expenses from customer rates, which the Energy and Policy Institute estimates saves Wisconsin Electric customers more than $2.4 million a year. Regulators say statewide energy bills have risen 24.6% since 2020.
Data centers, a city-owned utility and the bill history
The commission rejected a March proposal that would have billed ratepayers for a quarter of the cost of power plants built for data centers, and it ordered those costs assigned directly to large data-center customers. An April commission bulletin on a related tariff quotes Nieto saying the goal is for data center customers to pay their own way, fully and transparently.
The Citizens Utility Board says a typical Wisconsin Electric residential bill rose 33% from 2022 to 2026, and its executive director, Tom Content, said regulators could have gone further. Wisconsin Electric spokesman Brendan Conway told Spectrum News that the rise since 2020 is basically the cost of inflation and that the money funds the shift from coal to solar, wind, batteries and natural gas.
Investors read the day differently. WEC Energy Group shares reached an all-time high of $120 before the hearing and slipped to $116 by the next morning, Wisconsin Watch reported. Fuel costs are expected to dip in 2027 for Wisconsin Electric and the state’s other major utilities, which could soften the first year of the increase, though the company’s own estimates of the monthly impact are the ones quoted above.
The Clean Economy Coalition of Wisconsin, in a Nov. 5 release, urged Governor-elect David Crowley and the Legislature to act on accountability reforms. Milwaukee’s Common Council voted unanimously for $1.35 million to study a city-owned utility, and Mayor Cavalier Johnson has until the end of Nov. 17 to veto the amendment.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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