Wisconsin’s Power Commission Now Holds Oracle’s 2027 Campus

Oracle’s Port Washington AI campus still has no approved path onto the Wisconsin grid, and Aterio now puts full power in October 2028. Vantage Data Centers is building the four-hall Project Lighthouse site for Oracle, with OpenAI as a partner, while We Energies is the retail utility. The halls can rise without a live feed. They cannot take customer load until American Transmission Co. finishes a new high-voltage hookup the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin has not cleared.

Oracle is still pointing customers to the second half of 2027. The company that actually has to build the lines cannot pour foundations until the commission acts, and that clock was set back to zero in September 2026.

ATC Cannot Build Until the PSC Says So

Aterio, a Vancouver data firm that reads U.S. siting filings, put the problem in one line. The campus cannot run until ATC connects it, and ATC cannot start building until the PSC approves the case. Permits for the halls are already in hand. Work has run since December 2025. Satellite images from September 10, 2026, show two of the four buildings enclosed. That progress does not move a megawatt onto a rack.

Vantage quotes 902 MW of critical IT load, the power that reaches computers. Utility records quote 1.3 GW of total site demand, which also counts cooling and the rest of the plant. Those are different figures for the same campus, not a conflict. In September 2025 Vantage asked ATC to look at energizing about 310 MW by the end of June 2027, and the same request forecast 438 MW of peak demand in 2027 before the full 1.3 GW from 2028.

ATC’s preferred build comes in two steps. A new Decker substation beside the campus, plus short high-voltage ties, is meant to take about seven months and supply partial power. The rest of the lines and substations is meant to take about 17 months. ATC plans to start 31 days after a written PSC order, and Wisconsin law also bars construction until six months after the refiling was received, which Aterio dates to about March 18, 2027.

ATERIO’S THREE POWER DATES

Aterio calls the fastest path highly unlikely, because no recent Wisconsin case of this size moved that quickly and ATC is not asking for a rushed review. Its base case, a 180-day decision, puts the full 1.3 GW around October 2028. Even a December 2027 first feed leaves almost no time to energize, test, and commission each hall, so Aterio expects campus load to ramp mainly from the first quarter of 2028. If the PSC takes the extra 180 days it used on every large 345-kV line Aterio checked, partial power slides to June 2028 and the full 1.3 GW to April 2029.

Ten Months of Review Ended With No Decision

The commission did not reject the lines. It decided it no longer knew what project it was being asked to approve. ATC first filed in September 2025. The PSC found that filing complete on December 15, 2025, which started a statutory clock of 180 days, with one possible extension of another 180 days. ATC then filed or refiled 564 more application documents, adding route changes, temporary bypass lines, a revised uprate scope, and new cost figures.

An administrative law judge in July 2026 ordered ATC to list every change and the reason for it, then found that it had not. Late additions would have needed more environmental review than the legal deadline allowed, which raised the risk of approval by default. On August 6, 2026, the three-member commission voted to pull the completeness finding. On September 10 it closed docket 137-CE-221 and said any new filing had to “clearly explain the Project.”

THE PSC CLOCK ON THE LINES

1. September 2025: ATC files the first Ozaukee County Distribution Interconnection case.
2. December 15, 2025: The PSC finds that filing complete and starts the decision clock.
3. August 6, 2026: Commissioners unanimously revoked the completeness determination after the scope kept moving.
4. September 10, 2026: The commission closes the docket and invites a fresh filing, with no ruling on the merits.
5. September 18, 2026: The PSC records ATC’s new application as received, restarting the 30-day completeness check.
6. October 19, 2026: Aterio’s date for that completeness call, after which a 180-day decision window can run, once, for another 180 days.

ATC posted a revised application in September that drops an east-west route through Trenton and Saukville, names a South East preferred path, and adds a large E-STATCOM voltage device next to the proposed Decker substation, costed at about $1.1 billion. Jared Winters, ATC’s executive vice president and chief assets officer, said the need had not changed, but the application had, after more landowner, local, and agency input. The first review produced 483 staff questions across 16 rounds. Completeness on the new papers is expected, Aterio says, and not guaranteed. Every comparable case it reviewed, including the original filing, was found incomplete at least once.

Who Pays for ATC’s Multi-Billion-Dollar Lines?

The refiled project, spanning Calumet, Fond du Lac, Manitowoc, Ozaukee, Sheboygan, and Washington counties, is priced in the application at $2.48 billion to $2.72 billion, up from the closed docket’s roughly $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion range, with the voltage device a large part of the jump. ATC said the Lighthouse customer is committed, through its rates, to fully funding the transmission built to serve it. Port Washington’s own project materials say Vantage will pay for the power kit with no cost to other consumers. The fight on paper is over the months of construction before those bills start, and over who is on the hook if the campus uses less power than the lines were sized for.

Existing Wisconsin customers should not pay a single cent to subsidize the service of data centers.

Kristy Nieto, PSC commissioner, April 2026 tariff vote

That line, which the Citizens Utility Board recorded when the commission overhauled We Energies’ very large customer rates, is why Oracle is not just another tenant waiting on a permit. In April 2026 the PSC required data centers to pay for 100 percent of plants built to serve them, stretched those contracts to 15 years, and tried to push transmission costs onto the campuses. CUB still says ATC is the remaining hole, because existing customers can pay for data-center lines during construction, before the campus is paying. Tom Content, CUB’s executive director, has argued that tech firms not pay a single cent of that shift, and that more than 2,000 people commented or spoke in the rate case.

WHERE THE BILL LANDS

• Early works: Vantage agreed in February 2026 to fund about $101.4 million of engineering, environmental, right-of-way, and procurement work before any PSC order.
• Collateral: Oracle said in an affidavit that PSC security rules could force a letter of credit exceeding $7 billion, at an annual cost that could exceed $100 million, after S&P Global cut the firm to BBB- in July 2026, below the commission’s A-minus bar.
• The lawsuit: Oracle sued in June 2026 to loosen those credit tests, then dropped the case in August 2026; the A-minus rule still stands.
• ATC’s claim: The Lighthouse customer, through rates, is committed to fully funding the transmission built to serve the campus.

Oracle said it remains committed to paying its full share for energy and to the guarantees needed so Wisconsin ratepayers are not left with the risk. The dollar figures above are the price of that promise, and they sit with a tenant that does not own the lines and cannot start them.

Four Halls Are Rising Without Grid Power

The city approved the campus in August 2025. The state DNR granted wetland and stormwater coverage in December 2025. Backup generator air permits followed in June 2026. A suit over the city’s tax increment district was dismissed in September 2026. A Sierra Club challenge to the generator permits is still pending, with no stop-work order. Aterio does not expect that case to outrun the line delay.

WHAT IS ALREADY IN THE GROUND

• Campus size: Four halls on a site quoted at $15 billion, with 902 MW of IT load and 1.3 GW of total electrical demand.
• Build status: Two halls enclosed with interior work underway, two still in structural work, per Vantage’s late-summer update and September 10 satellite images.
• Oracle’s date: Customer delivery in the second half of 2027.
• Vantage’s date: Full campus buildout by 2028, a construction milestone, not a grid-power date.

Javier Reyes, Aterio’s head of data center research, said construction is moving and power delivery is not, because the review has started over. Finished buildings that cannot draw power would be the result of a long PSC case, not a construction miss. Oracle’s last reported quarter delivered about 850 MW of new capacity; Lighthouse at about 900 MW of IT load is in that class. Idle halls of that size are not a rounding error on a balance sheet that already showed a $664 billion backlog and about $5 billion of negative free cash flow in fiscal first-quarter 2027. Fiscal 2026 capex was $55.7 billion against $67.4 billion of revenue, and fiscal 2027 capex guidance runs up to $95 billion.

Construction at Port Washington is progressing steadily, but power delivery depends on a regulatory process that has restarted. Based on the public record, we see a meaningful risk that load arrives later than Oracle’s current guidance.

Javier Reyes, Head of Data Center Research, Aterio

Oracle Sent New Mexico a Force Majeure Notice

On September 24, 2026, Oracle sent a force majeure notice to a Blue Owl Capital unit behind STACK Infrastructure, the developer of Project Jupiter in Doña Ana County, New Mexico. People familiar with the notice said Oracle was trying to put off payments if that campus missed its planned 2028 opening, not to walk away as tenant. Blue Owl said the notice does not change financial commitments to the multi-year project. Oracle’s public line was that such notices are common on jobs of this size and do not, by themselves, prove a delay.

Force-majeure notices are commonplace in developments of this scale and are often used to preserve contractual rights among project partners. They do not, by themselves, establish a project delay or change delivery expectations.

Oracle, September 24, 2026

Project Jupiter remains on our planned schedule. We are fully committed to New Mexico and confident in our path forward.

Oracle has made significant economic, community, and philanthropic investments in the state. This includes reimagining Project Jupiter’s power plan as part of…

— Oracle (@Oracle) September 24, 2026

Aterio treats the New Mexico notice as a signal, not as a Wisconsin filing. It shows Oracle protecting itself against permit lag on another large campus while Lighthouse waits on ATC. The Wisconsin work is a tenant-plus-developer structure with Vantage in the dirt and ATC on the right of way. The New Mexico work is a lease with a landlord Oracle is already bargaining with over time. In both places the company that sold the 2027 and 2028 dates does not control the switch.

What the Point Beach Nuclear Deal Covers

On October 2, 2026, We Energies and Oracle announced a separate pact that still has to clear the same commission. Oracle would subscribe to a portion of the output We Energies is required to buy from the Point Beach Nuclear Plant, a step the companies said should save other customers about $300 million in fuel costs. We Energies said it will file full terms with the PSC in the coming months. The deal does not replace the Ozaukee lines. It is a fuel-cost shift on existing nuclear output, pitched as ratepayer cover while the 1.3 GW interconnection remains unbuilt.

Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, said the company would absorb about $300 million in fuel costs and fully fund Project Lighthouse energy costs. Oracle also claimed more than $11 billion of local economic output, more than 4,000 skilled construction jobs over three years, and 1,000 ongoing operations roles. Those job and output figures are the company’s. They do not turn on a server if Decker is still a drawing.

The next date that actually moves power is the completeness call on ATC’s refiling, due around October 19, 2026. If the filing is incomplete again, every Aterio date slides. If it is complete, the 180-day decision clock starts, with a possible run to roughly a year, which is how the last comparable 345-kV cases ended. Oracle can promise Point Beach savings, post a letter of credit, and keep pouring slabs in Port Washington. That is not a CPCN for the lines.