WAUPUN — The Waupun City Council heard about the Municipal Electric Utilities of Wisconsin and how their lobbying impacts energy utilities for local communities.
Tyler Vorpagel, representing MEUW, presented these items at the Common Council meeting held March 11, 2025.
Vorpagel is the Director of Legislative and Regulatory Relations at Municipal Electric Utilities of Wisconsin. He also previously served as State Representative to Assembly District 27, and is currently District Director for Congressman Thomas Petri.
Vorpagel spoke about the role of the MEUW organization at the state level and their work with Waupun Utilities. Based in Sun Prairie, MEUW was originally formed in September 1928 as Wisconsin Municipal Utility Association and currently lobbies the state legislature on energy policy.
Some of the legislative issues they are currently working on include “Right of First Refusal” legislation, expidited electric rate case process, “All of the Above” approach to electric generation, customer fairness for solar and indvidual customer meters, and municipal bond tax exemptions. During the presentation he also mentioned some of the factors that go into energy prices, including international trade and tariffs.
After Vorpagel completed his presentation, he opened up the floor to questions from the Council.
Alderman Pete Kaczmarski asked if Canada cutting off energy imports would impact Wisconsin electric services, which Vorpagel said he didn’t know as that was more of a question for WPPI Energy. Brooks said that it would not directly impact providers in the sense of cutting off electricity to specific regions, but it could cause a change in prices.
City Attorney Dan Vande Zande asked Brooks if the price rates for the City would stay locked where they are or whether there would be a shortage. Brooks said that would depend on the short term vs long term contracts, but that market energy prices would be likely to go up from other factors such as the development of AI datacenters in the region.
Alderman Dan Siebers pointed out that there are a number of datacenters that are being constructed in Wisconsin over the next several years, on top of the already existing ones. Vorpagel said that the increased load is primarily from datacenters and other similar high energy users. According to Vorpagel, the Milwaukee datacenter project uses more than 100 times the amount of energy that Waunakee uses annually, which is a comparable community in energy consumption to Waupun.
No action was taken regarding this matter as it was a discussion-only presentation.
Mayor Rohn Bishop, Waupun Utilities Director Steve Brooks, and Vorpagel all took a trip to Washington DC late last month to participate in a federal lobbying event to advocate for Wisconsin utilities to federal representatives. Bishop and Brooks also attended the Municipal Electric Utilities of Wisconsin lobbying day at the State of Wisconsin on February 5.
