How the regulatory environment and the permitting process impact Wisconsin’s energy capabilities
Imagine your electric bill doubling overnight, with no recourse or oversight to protect you.
That’s exactly what happened in La Crosse, Wis., in 1904 when George MacMillan bought three local electric utilities, merged them, and hiked rates from 10 cents to a staggering 22 cents per kilowatt hour. Outraged ratepayers took to the streets, but local newspapers failed to amplify their voices, prompting the creation of the La Crosse Tribune to shine a light on this injustice.
This dark chapter in Wisconsin’s history sparked a movement that gave birth to one of the nation’s most robust utility regulatory systems — a system that continues to safeguard consumer access to fair utility rates today.
In 1907, Wisconsin’s Legislature took bold action by passing the Public Utilities Law, establishing the state Public Service Commission (PSC). This visionary law recognized two fundamental truths: Public utilities needed to be granted monopoly power to ensure efficiency, and monopoly power needed to be held accountable through rigorous state oversight. The PSC was created to provide that oversight.
Today, more than 100 years later, the three governor-appointed commissioners, supported by a team of experts — auditors, engineers, economists and consumer specialists — still stand as a respected and highly regarded watchdog ensuring utilities deliver safe, reliable and affordable services while balancing the needs of consumers, investors and industry.
Why Wisconsin’s PSC matters
Before the decision to ensure both efficiency and rigorous oversight, utility rates across Wisconsin were an uneven patchwork, set by local governments trying to do their best with varying degrees of expertise and consistency. This led to skyrocketing costs, biased decision-making and wasteful competition that hurt both consumers and investors and adversely affected economic growth in the state.
Thanks to more than a century of working together — the PSC, utilities, consumers and elected officials — Wisconsin is well-positioned for the future by providing:
- Fair and Just Rates: Utilities cannot raise rates without PSC approval, preventing price gouging and ensuring rates reflect reasonable costs and fair returns for investors.
- Universal Service: By law, utilities must provide adequate service to all customers who request it, ensuring no one is left in the dark. Discontinuing service? That requires PSC approval, too.
- Transparency and Public Input: The PSC’s website (psc.wi.gov) empowers consumers to track rate cases, submit comments, attend public meetings and even intervene in cases. This isn’t just regulation — it’s democracy in action.
- Reliability and Sustainability: The PSC oversees more than 1,100 utilities, ensuring they meet high standards for safety, reliability and environmental responsibility while approving major projects such as power plants and transmission lines.
Not every state offers Wisconsin’s enviable, stable regulatory energy environment for residential customers, businesses and investors. Consumers in our state have shown their appreciation. In the late 1990s, when there was discussion about restructuring, or deregulating, the state’s electric utility industry, a coalition of Wisconsin energy stakeholders, including electricity providers, residential, farm, and small-business customers, low-income residents, utility workers and environmental advocates came together to share concerns with moving from a regulated utility system to one that would make electricity in Wisconsin more expensive and less reliable.
These groups formed the Customers First Coalition (CFC) to advocate for policies that put the needs of Wisconsin customers first and protect the state’s historically safe, affordable and reliable electricity.
Instead of deregulating, legislators have enacted bipartisan policies that CFC officials say generated investment in the state’s economy and jobs, improved electric reliability, strengthened energy conservation and diversified electricity supply while preserving a system of checks and balances that protect Wisconsin customers.
Kristin Gilkes, CFC executive director, says regulation favors customers.
“When utility regulation works as intended, customers win,” she said. “Thoughtful, long-term regulation encourages smart investments that deliver reliable, affordable power while protecting families and businesses from sharp price swings over time.”
She points to the risks of deregulation.
“Deregulated markets often leave customers overpaying for electricity and exposed to unfair pricing practices,” Gilkes said. “Utility regulation protects customers by ensuring transparency and fairness through audits, oversight and a thorough review process — providing a safeguard in an essential industry where true free-market competition doesn’t naturally exist.”
Gilkes says Wisconsin’s legacy of a strong regulatory environment has paid lasting dividends for stakeholders.
“Wisconsin’s electric customers — large and small — deserve safe, reliable and affordable power. That’s why, more than a century ago, the Legislature created the Public Service Commission and established a strong regulatory framework,” she said. “Wisconsin’s economy thrives when abundant, affordable electricity is available for everyone and price increases are kept in check. Thanks to this regulatory structure, Wisconsin residential customers enjoy some of the lowest average electric bills in the Midwest, with prices that remain stable over the long term.”
Ultimately, she says regulation protects customers.
“Utility rate regulation is almost like an insurance policy for customers — we’re paying over time for investments that ensure reliable, affordable power,” Gilkes said. “Through its oversight of Wisconsin’s regulated electricity utilities, the Public Service Commission helps ensure the long-term delivery of reliable service at stable, affordable prices.”
Jeff Keebler, chairman, president and CEO of Madison Gas and Electric, contrasts a utility’s role to a Wisconsin restaurant on a fish-fry Friday: Always be ready to serve every customer with plenty in reserve. “We have to build to capacity plus reserve,” Keebler says. “The regulatory environment in Wisconsin ensures utility services are safe, reliable, affordable and sustainable.” This framework guarantees consumer access and equity, setting Wisconsin apart from states with weaker oversight.”
[TITLE] THE PERMITTING PROCESS
[SUBTITLE] No decision related to building, operating and maintaining a transmission line is made lightly. Here is an example of the process that determines need and oversees siting, permitting and construction.
By Doug Mell
As electricity becomes more essential to nearly everything we do and the commitment to greater reliance on in situ alternative energy generation becomes a reality, transmission lines have become the nation’s economic and social lifelines. This growing reliance on electricity coupled with unprecedented levels of demand make it ever more important that we understand how and why those lifelines are designed, sited, permitted, constructed and maintained and how all of that affects consumer access to reliable, affordable energy.
No decision related to building, operating and maintaining a transmission line is made lightly. There’s simply too much at stake in terms of the multiple strategic and economic needs to ensure energy reliability and accessibility (e.g., public health and safety, employment, education, food production and water management). The magnitude of the financial investment and human resources required to ascertain need, determine an acceptable route, secure the necessary approvals, obtain real estate and build the project also encourages careful, thoughtful, data-based decision-making.
Western Wisconsin transmission line project
A look at the Western Wisconsin transmission line project provides insights into the thoroughness, complexity, investment and amount of hands-on work involved in getting the electricity to consumers.
Identifying the need for a new transmission line
The electric transmission lines in Wisconsin, 14 other states and the Canadian province of Manitoba are operated by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), a nonprofit, member-based organization regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
In Wisconsin, the process in which a new transmission line can be approved and built starts with MISO’s identification of need and its approval and recommendation of a route for the proposed transmission line to the Wisconsin Public Service Commission.
The need for a Western Wisconsin transmission line was identified during a planning process that MISO started in 2019 dedicated to examining “… industry trends around resource and technology developments that highlighted growing challenges around resource availability, flexibility and visibility of the resource fleet in meeting future energy needs.” That examination resulted in the development of a “long-range transmission planning portfolio dedicated to making sure the MISO transmission system could … meet demand in all hours while supporting the resource plans and renewable energy penetration targets.”
MISO’s approval and recommendation
MISO’s two-year-plus extensive examination led the organization to conclude in 2022 that 18 transmission projects with a total initial cost of $10.3 billion would be needed to protect energy reliability in the MISO Midwest subregion. One project is in Western Wisconsin, originally called the Tremval-Eau Claire-Jump River, which the Wisconsin PSC said would involve constructing, “… a new 345 kV (kilovolt) high-voltage transmission line (HVTL) in the counties of Chippewa, Clark, Eau Claire and Trempealeau. The project would also rebuild existing lines, construct new 345 kV substations depending on the chosen transmission route, and expand or upgrade multiple existing substations.”
The MISO Board of Directors officially approved the Tremval-Eau Claire-Jump River project in July 2022.
PSC exercises its authority
In Wisconsin, projects such as the Tremval-Eau Claire-Jump River project require a certificate of public convenience and necessity from the PSC. Utilities in the affected area must provide at least two routes for the commission to consider, which is why Xcel Energy got involved in 2022.
MISO was developing a long-range transmission planning portfolio, remembered Mara Ascheman, Xcel’s regional vice president of rates and regulatory affairs. “What MISO said during that process was, we see this energy transition coming and we really want to think about what the transmission capability is we need, not only here in Wisconsin, but throughout the whole MISO footprint,” she said.
Keeping that objective and the need to submit a second route choice in mind, Xcel’s engineers, analysts and other experts studied the cost and feasibility of the MISO-recommended route and then developed an alternative, which was a 94-mile transmission line that would start at an expansion of the Tremval Substation near Blair in Trempealeau County, then move north to the east of Eau Claire before heading west into Eau Claire itself. From there, it would continue northeast, ending at the proposed Jump River Substation North near Sheldon in Chippewa County.
Over the next two years, as the Xcel team developed their approach, they believed they could identify a different, less-expensive route. “Our project team said this transmission line is intending to connect the three existing 345 kV lines in the state, and another way to do that would be to do it farther south and parallel Highway 29 instead of paralleling the Chippewa River,” Ascheman said.
Pursuing that objective involved, Ascheman said, all the diverse expertise required to assemble a permit including engineers, project managers, permitting leads, environmental specialists, attorneys and many others. According to the certificate of public convenience and necessity, Xcel Energy projected $9.2 million in precertification costs for the project. These costs encompass all the time and effort needed to prepare and secure the permit, covering engineering, environmental and legal work, she added.
Xcel Energy wasn’t alone in making financial and human investments in the effort. American Transmission Co. (ATC), a co-applicant on the project, would be constructing a new substation, the Jump River Substation, which ATC will own and operate. ATC, based in Wisconsin, owns, operates and maintains over 10,000 miles of electric power lines and 587 substations in portions of Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
Ascheman explained that ATC “has formed a cross-functional project team to efficiently plan and execute our portion of the Western Wisconsin Transmission Connection Project. This team includes both employees and contractors from various disciplines, including engineering, construction, environmental management, real estate, operations, local relations, GIS, communications, regulatory affairs, supply chain, and additional relevant fields.” There are about 50 members of this team.
Just over $800,000 in precertification costs for ATC were projected, Ascheman said. “These costs include the time and effort required to prepare and plan for our portion of the project.”
Route 2, developed by Xcel Energy, is a proposed 80-mile transmission line that runs through Chippewa, Clark, Eau Claire and Trempealeau counties. It starts at an expansion of the Tremval Substation near Blair in Trempealeau County, following a similar path as Route 1 for the first 40 miles. It then takes a more eastward route before turning north, avoiding Eau Claire, and terminates with the Jump River South Substation.
In August 2024, Xcel Energy submitted the MISO-approved route, now with an estimated cost of about $670 million, and their alternative route costing about $483 million. “In our application, we compared the costs and the impacts to people and the environment and determined that of the two routes on the table, Route 2 was our preferred option,” Ascheman said.
According to the PSC, “The applicants state the project would fill a need for a reliable transmission grid to support future generation resources and future load. The project would allow for the interconnection of new renewable energy sources as fossil-fuel generation sources are retired. Additionally, the project would reduce load on multiple facilities in northern and northwestern Wisconsin.”
The public had opportunities to weigh in
Public hearings were held and the PSC approved Route 2 in late October 2025. The timeline calls for landowner negotiations and site acquisition in 2025 and 2026, with construction in 2026 and 2027, and completion in 2028.
While the most strenuous, the PSC approval is just one of five that the applicants need from state agencies and three they need from federal agencies.
When asked to comment on the complexity, length of time, and cost of the current process and how it affects reliability, Clair Moeller, MISO’s president and chief operating officer at the time, said, “MISO is focused on working collaboratively with our diverse stakeholder community to design the transmission system needed for continued reliable and resilient operations. These projects will support the reliable, affordable transition of the generation fleet.”
Ascheman of Xcel Energy agreed, saying, “This transmission line is connecting three 345s (kilovolt lines) that has considerable benefits to Western Wisconsin, so if one of those 345s goes out, there will be something to connect them to allow that power to move to one of the other lines.”
Doug Mell is retired from his role as UW–Stout’s executive director of communications and external relations, a position he assumed after serving as editor of the Eau Claire LeaderTelegram.
