We Energies Makes Deal to Power Oracle Data Center with Nuclear Energy
Utility seeks state PSC approval, says it could save customers millions.
The Point Beach Nuclear Plant along Lake Michigan in Two Rivers, Wisconsin. (Yodel2010/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Oracle is looking to Wisconsin’s only operating nuclear plant to power its Ozaukee County data center.
We Energies announced an agreement with the cloud computing giant on Friday that would allow Oracle to “subscribe” to between 10% and 20% of the Point Beach Nuclear Plant’s electricity generation. That electricity would help meet the energy needs of Project Lighthouse, the data center campus in Port Washington that Oracle is co-developing with artificial intelligence firm OpenAI.
The agreement still requires approval by Wisconsin’s Public Service Commission. If it is approved, We Energies spokesman Brendan Conway said it could spare the utility’s other customers roughly $300 million in fuel costs over the next five years.
The 60-year-old Point Beach plant in Manitowoc County is the state’s largest generator, but the electricity it produces is more expensive than alternatives. We Energies spends about twice as much on fuel as its sibling utility, Wisconsin Public Service Company (PSC). The cost of nuclear fuel for Point Beach accounts for much of the difference.
We Energies owned the facility until 2007, when it sold Point Beach to independent energy infrastructure giant NextEra Energy but continued purchasing most of the plant’s electricity output. The utility’s current purchase agreement expires in 2033, but We Energies recently signed on to continue buying roughly 86% of the plant’s electricity for another 20-year term.
Meanwhile, We Energies filed a separate application with the PSC on Friday seeking approval to build a new natural gas power plant on the site of the Fox Energy Center in Outagamie County. The proposed plant would more than double the site’s electricity output.
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This article first appeared on Wisconsin Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
