The winners of a several hundred million-dollar transmission project construction bid called Wisconsin’s native transmission utility a “sore loser” for its efforts to overturn the bid award.

American Transmission Company in June asked federal regulators to overturn the decision-making that awarded Chicago-based Viridon a contract to build four extra high-voltage power lines and a new substation in eastern Wisconsin. 

In a 61-page filing last week, Viridon excoriated ATC for its complaint, saying the utility was resorting to underhand means to undercut competition after failing to obtain preferential treatment from Wisconsin lawmakers. 

“While each of the Qualified Developers submitting bids no doubt thought their proposal was the best, only ATC has challenged (the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s) selection; not because ATC’s proposal was better for regional ratepayers, but because ATC is a sore loser that has been unable to secure the regional project through competition avoidance means and unable to win on the merits,” the Blackstone-backed grid developer wrote. 

ATC in June argued MISO should be ordered to reevaluate the bids it received for what was originally a four-power-line, four-substation project, or rebid that project entirely. 

That was because, the Wisconsin utility said, MISO had not adjusted its bid requirements after ATC notified the grid operator that it would need three area substations online by 2027, six years earlier than originally bid, to serve the Vantage-Oracle-OpenAI data center in Port Washington. 

MISO in March reassigned responsibility to build those three substations to ATC, but kept the other substation and the power lines with Viridon. 

Viridon argues that ATC is using the Port Washington data center’s service needs as a pretense to interrupt regional transmission planning in order to serve its own interests. 

It claims that Wisconsin ratepayers are now on the hook for the cost of the three substations instead of power users across the region and that ATC is seeking to take over the entire regional transmission project in order to shift those costs back across the grid. 

Viridon also cast doubt on ATC’s ability to finish the three substations it had been assigned in time to serve the Port Washington data center, noting that state regulators had recently thrown out ATC’s application for a $1 billion transmission project serving that facility. 

MISO also filed a response to ATC last week defending its handling of the bid process and asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to deny the complaint. 

The Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition also attacked ATC’s complaint in a filing last week, calling it “a kitchen-sink series of unsupported allegations in an effort to gain more control over transmission planning.”

In a statement, ATC said it “stands by its filing, will continue to participate in the FERC proceeding and defers to the Commission regarding next steps and timing.”

WPPI Energy, which is jointly owned by 51 municipal electric companies in the Upper Midwest, submitted a filing backing ATC’s complaint. 

ATC, along with other Wisconsin utilities, has pushed to receive first dibs on regional transmission projects built in its service area.

In last year’s legislative session, the utility spent hundreds of hours lobbying for “right of first refusal” legislation. In April, it was part of a coalition of utilities that filed a complaint with FERC asking to be exempted from bidding rules for large transmission projects.