Oracle has agreed to "subscribe" to between 10% and 20% of the electricity from Wisconsin's Point Beach Nuclear Plant to power the AI data center campus it is developing with OpenAI in Port Washington, Wisconsin Watch reported Friday. Utility We Energies announced the arrangement, which still needs approval from the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.

What Happened

Under the proposal, Oracle would draw power from Point Beach for Project Lighthouse, the Port Washington campus. Forkast, which also covered the deal, put the share at roughly 125 to 250 megawatts and said Vantage Data Centers is a partner in the project alongside Oracle and OpenAI.

We Energies spokesman Brendan Conway told Wisconsin Watch the agreement could spare the utility's other customers roughly $300 million in fuel costs. Wisconsin Watch reported the savings over the next five years; Forkast put the period at 2027 through 2033. Forkast also reported that the Oracle deal accounts for about a fifth of a proposed $176 million electric rate increase We Energies is seeking for 2027.

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The same day, We Energies filed a separate application with the PSC to build a natural gas power plant at its Fox Energy Center in Outagamie County, which Wisconsin Watch said would more than double the site's output.

Why It Matters

Point Beach, a roughly 60-year-old plant in Manitowoc County, is Wisconsin's largest electricity generator and its only operating nuclear plant, producing just over 1 gigawatt. We Energies sold it to NextEra Energy in 2007 but still buys about 86% of its output under a contract that runs to 2033, and the utility recently agreed to keep buying for another 20 years after that.

That power has become expensive. Forkast reported that Point Beach's cost per megawatt-hour rose from about $45.94 in 2016 to $75.51 in 2026 and is projected to reach $122.45 by 2033. Wisconsin Watch said We Energies spends roughly twice as much on fuel as Wisconsin Public Service, with Point Beach a large part of the gap. Shifting part of that output to Oracle is how the utility argues other customers would come out ahead.

For Oracle and OpenAI, the deal secures carbon-free power for one of their largest planned sites. Forkast described Lighthouse as a $15 billion project designed for close to 1 gigawatt of AI capacity within a 1.3-gigawatt electrical footprint, targeted for completion in 2028 as part of the Stargate buildout.

Context

Tech companies have increasingly turned to existing nuclear plants to supply AI data centers, because new reactors take years to build and nuclear output runs around the clock. Amazon has struck deals tied to plants owned by Talen Energy and Constellation Energy, for example.

In Wisconsin, the issue lands amid a broader debate over who pays for data center growth. Large campuses are planned or under construction in Port Washington, Mount Pleasant and Beaver Dam, and utilities are adding generation to meet the expected load. Whether household ratepayers end up covering part of the cost of serving those campuses has become a political issue in the state.

What to Watch

The PSC will review the Oracle subscription along with the related rate request. Regulators and intervenors are likely to scrutinize the final price Oracle pays, the length of the arrangement and how costs and savings are divided between Oracle and other ratepayers.

The gas plant application at the Fox Energy Center will move through its own review, and together the two filings will show how much new demand We Energies expects from data centers over the next decade.