October/November 2026 Issue

Also in this issue: The PSC’s Decision in Docket 5-BS-296: Regional Cooperation, Utility Regulation, and the Limits of Traditional Cost-Of-Service Ratemaking     |     Governor’s Race Could Reshape Wisconsin’s Utility and Natural-Resources Leadership     |     A Refresher On Attorney-Client Privilege

The MGS Public Utility Status Case Is About More Than Just a Power Line

Richard Heinemann | 11.11.26

The Bell Center-Columbia-Sugar Creek-IL/WI State Line (“BECI Line”) is a 190-mile, 765 kV transmission project designed to run from Bell Center in southwestern Wisconsin through Columbia County to Sugar Creek and the Illinois border. The project represents a $1.2 billion regional transmission investment intended to improve grid reliability, increase power-transfer capability, and accommodate future load growth. If constructed, it would be the largest transmission line ever built in Wisconsin.

The project has drawn substantial public attention. For months, representatives of the developers have met with local officials, stakeholders, and property owners throughout the region. Many have expressed concern about the project’s significant environmental and land-use impacts, as well as the proposed siting of the line. These issues will be examined by the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin (“PSC”) and the Department of Natural Resources when the developers submit an application for the required certificate of public convenience and necessity.

In the meantime, the PSC is taking up a more fundamental issue that may prove to be even more consequential than where the line is located or how it is built. In PSC Docket 2708-NC-100 (the “MGS Proceeding”), the Commission will consider whether the project developer, Midcontinent Grid Solutions Wisconsin, LLC (“MGS Wisconsin”), should be granted public utility status and whether the company qualifies for certain exemptions under the Wisconsin Utility Holding Company Act (“WUHCA”).

Wisconsin enacted WUHCA in 1985 at a time of flat electric growth when electric utilities were increasingly reorganizing into holding companies and expanding beyond their traditional regulated utility businesses. WUHCA allowed those structures but imposed an asset cap and other restrictions intended to protect regulated utilities and their customers from the financial risks of their increasingly diversified, unregulated affiliates.

By the late 1990s, the advent of wholesale electric markets administered by regional transmission organizations such as the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (“MISO”) prompted the Legislature to enact the “Reliability 2000” provisions of 1999 Wisconsin Act 9. To ensure reliability, coordinated transmission planning, and nondiscriminatory access to the grid, the law required the State’s integrated public utilities to transfer their transmission assets to an independent transmission company that became the American Transmission Company (“ATC”), while amending WUHCA and related statutes to accommodate the newly restructured industry.

In many respects, the MGS Proceeding represents Wisconsin’s first major test of whether and how this regulatory framework should adapt to an electric industry now confronting forecasts of unprecedented demand growth driven largely by data centers, an accelerating need for new generation and transmission infrastructure, and the growing role of well-capitalized private developers in financing major transmission projects.

MGS Wisconsin was formed after its merchant transmission developer affiliates were selected by MISO in a competitive bidding process to construct the BECI Line, which is part of MISO’s Long Range Transmission Planning Tranche 2.1 portfolio. The company’s affiliates include Transource Energy, LLC, a transmission-development joint venture of American Electric Power Company, Inc. and Evergy, Inc. and BHE U.S. Transmission, LLC, the transmission-development business of Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

In the MGS Proceeding, MGS Wisconsin is applying to the PSC for a certificate of authority to operate as an electric public utility and to qualify as a “transmission company,” as defined in Wis. Stat. § 196.485(1)(ge).

MGS Wisconsin is not the first transmission company to seek Wisconsin public utility status. The PSC previously authorized ITC Midwest to operate as a transmission-only public utility, tailoring the application of certain Wisconsin utility statutes to its transmission-only business model.

The MGS Proceeding, however, raises a materially different question: how far that tailored regulatory treatment can extend when the utility is embedded in an upstream ownership structure that MGS Wisconsin contends should largely fall outside WUHCA. MGS Wisconsin thus seeks both the legal status necessary to operate as a Wisconsin transmission utility and a determination that significant aspects of Wisconsin’s statutory framework governing utility ownership and control do not apply to its upstream corporate structure.

The potential regulatory implications of MGS Wisconsin’s application are a focal point of ATC’s request to intervene. ATC argues that MGS Wisconsin is advancing a novel interpretation of Wisconsin law under which it could obtain “transmission company” status while simultaneously avoiding regulatory requirements that apply to ATC under Wis. Stat. §§ 196.485(3m) and 196.487, while claiming exemption from WUHCA, an outcome ATC contends could fundamentally change Wisconsin’s regulatory framework for transmission companies and limit the Commission’s future authority.

Municipal electric utilities have a particular interest in these issues. Unlike vertically integrated investor-owned utilities, municipal utilities generally depend upon transmission systems owned and operated by others to deliver power to their communities. How Wisconsin regulates a new transmission-only utility, including its corporate structure and its relationship with affiliated companies, may therefore have consequences not only for MGS Wisconsin but for the regulatory framework governing the transmission providers on which municipal utilities and their customers depend.

Because the Commission’s decision may affect both the structure of Wisconsin’s transmission industry and the scope of future regulatory oversight, the docket has attracted an unusually broad cross-section of stakeholders. Alongside ATC and organizations representing municipally owned utilities, including WPPI Energy, Municipal Electric Utilities of Wisconsin, the Upper Midwest Municipal Energy Group, Great Lakes Utilities, and groups representing large industrial energy users, local governments, clean-energy advocates, property owners, school districts, and conservation interests have sought to intervene. The docket has also generated dozens of public comments, many focused on the potential land-use, environmental, and community impacts of the BECI Line.

The MGS Proceeding presents an important opportunity to revisit fundamental questions about utility ownership, transmission development, and regulatory oversight that have not been seriously examined for a generation. The answers may help shape Wisconsin’s approach to transmission development for the next one.