State regulators gave three utilities the OK to acquire a large solar and battery project in Rock County that will provide enough energy to power more than 45,000 homes.

The Public Service Commission on Thursday unanimously approved the proposal from We Energies, Wisconsin Public Service and Madison Gas and Electric.

The utilities applied to acquire the Dawn Harvest Solar and Battery Energy Storage Facility in Rock County, which is being developed by Chicago-based developer Invenergy. It will add 150 megawatts of solar and 50 megawatts of battery storage to the grid.

We Energies will be the majority owner of the project, with Wisconsin Public Service and Madison Gas and Electric as co-owners. 

We Energies will own the entire battery storage portion and 120 megawatts of solar generation. The remaining 30 megawatts will be split evenly between Wisconsin Public Service and Madison Gas and Electric.

WPS and We Energies are owned by the same parent company, WEC Energy Group.

According to the application, the cost of acquiring and building the Dawn Harvest project is roughly $443 million. The facility is expected to begin serving customers in 2028.

Dawn Harvest is part of a nearly $2 billion plan the utilities announced in 2024 that includes five wind, solar and storage projects.

Brendan Conway, a spokesperson for WEC Energy Group, said Dawn Harvest was the last of those projects that has now been approved by regulators. He said they’re all in various stages of construction.

“Over the long-term, these projects really lower costs for our customers,” he said. “They require no fuel costs. They’re less expensive to operate.”

In a statement, Madison Gas and Electric President and CEO Jeff Keebler said the utility’s ownership stake in Dawn Harvest is an “important step” in the company’s commitment to renewable energy.

“With our current plans, by 2030, we will have added more than 40 renewable generation and battery storage projects since 2015, totaling more than 750 MW, propelling us toward our goal of net-zero carbon electricity by 2050,” Keebler stated.

Last year, We Energies also asked state regulators to approve a multi-billion-dollar plan to add almost 3 gigawatts of power to the electric grid to meet rising energy demand from data centers. The utility applied to take an ownership stake in seven proposed solar projects and two planned natural gas power plants.

Conway said Dawn Harvest will likely help serve a major data center campus in Port Washington.

If regulators approve a data center rate proposal from We Energies, he said the Port Washington project would subscribe to 70 percent of We Energies’ share of the project’s solar output and about 80 percent of the project’s battery storage.

“It makes a lot of sense to have the data centers subscribe to portions of various renewable projects if they want,” Conway said. “They have clean energy goals similar to ours.”

The approval of the utilities’ acquisition of Dawn Harvest came the same week a state Senate committee held a public hearing on a bill that would require local governments to approve large-scale solar and wind projects before those projects can be approved by state regulators.

The bill’s supporters say it promotes local control and protects farmland. But clean energy groups argue the bill unfairly targets renewable energy and injects uncertainty into the approval process.

Andrew Kell, policy director for the nonprofit RENEW Wisconsin, said solar and wind projects help drive economic development through lease payments to landowners and utility aid payments to local municipalities. He also said renewable energy development makes Wisconsin more energy independent. 

“We don’t have fossil fuels here in the state,” he said. “To the extent that we can develop our own resources to serve our energy needs, that’s really going to benefit us in the short-term and the long-term.”