Alliant Energy is pursuing additional data-center electricity contracts as U.S. power needs rise, with management targeting about 1 gigawatt of new commitments that could add billions of dollars to investment plans.
Alliant Energy President and CEO Lisa Barton gave the six-month target during the company’s Oct. 30 earnings call. Alliant said its Iowa and Wisconsin utilities have 3.4 GW of data-center demand under contract across three sites; the additional gigawatt remains a target for future agreements. Reuters reported that the existing contracts involve Alphabet’s Google, Meta Platforms and QTS Data Centers.
Chief Financial Officer Robert Durian said Alliant uses a rough planning estimate of $2 billion to $3 billion in added capital expenditures for each extra gigawatt of load. He said the potential demand could begin ramping around 2029 or 2030, with some related spending in the 2027-30 period and some afterward. Alliant said it assesses prospects for land, transmission, generation and local permitting before including them in its capital plan.
Alliant previously raised its projected capital spending for 2027-30 by 19% to $15.9 billion. The company expects peak demand across its system to rise about 60% by 2031. Its planned spending includes generation, renewable energy, energy storage and grid projects.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) put end-user electricity sales at 4,058.0 billion kilowatthours in 2025 in its October outlook. Its estimates rise to 4,152.0 billion in 2026 and 4,216.6 billion in 2027; the agency projected commercial-sector demand, including data centers, to grow 2.8% in 2027.
Alliant says large-load customers will pay the full cost of serving them and their share of required system investments. “Existing customers should benefit from large load growth, not subsidize it,” Barton said. Management expects decisions in the first half of 2027 on a Wisconsin tariff for large-load customers and an Iowa application tied to a second Google project.
