Infrastructure · 30 October 2026 · 5 min read

Alliant’s data-centre load is 3.4 gigawatts on a contract. The next one is not

The 29 October release says the Iowa and Wisconsin utilities have 3.4 gigawatts of contracted data-centre demand, and that capital spending for 2027 to 2030 is now $15.9 billion. Reuters, reporting the next day’s call, says the finance chief expects about 1 gigawatt more signed within six months. A day before the release, the Energy Department said a $5.1 billion loan had reached financial close, for more than 2.6 gigawatts of generation. Those are three different facts.

An Alliant Energy employee in a yellow hard hat stands with his arms crossed in front of white battery cabinets. — Alliant’s photograph of an employee at the Edgewater battery cabinets in Sheboygan. The company says that system is 99 megawatts, with operations scheduled for autumn 2026. It is not a data centre, and it is not one of the gas plants in the federal loan.

Alliant Energy’s own release, on 29 October, is the document with a signed number. It says the company’s utilities, Interstate Power and Light and Wisconsin Power and Light, have 3.4 gigawatts of contracted demand from data centres. It says peak demand is expected to rise by approximately 60 percent by 2031, and that the energy resources needed for that expected load have raised forecast capital spending for 2027 through 2030 to $15.9 billion. Contracted demand is a customer who has signed. It is not a megawatt-hour that has already been used, and the release does not name the customers or the sites.

The extra gigawatt is not in that release. Reuters, reporting the earnings call on 30 October, said chief financial officer Robert Durian expects the company to sign contracts for about 1 gigawatt of additional data-centre demand within six months, on top of the 3.4 gigawatts already contracted with Google, Meta and QTS. Reuters says that additional gigawatt would begin ramping between 2029 and 2031, and quotes Durian on “capital upside” from data-centre prospects the company may see. A prospect on a call is a sentence. It is not the 3.4 gigawatts, and this desk has not read a transcript. The written release is the record of what is signed.

The loan is a third fact, and it is about generation, not about a data-centre signature. On 28 October the Energy Department said it had reached financial close on a $5.1 billion loan package to Alliant, for Iowa and Wisconsin. The department says the investments will add more than 2.6 gigawatts of new or upgraded power, in new gas-fired plants, energy storage and upgrades to existing stations. It also says the package will deliver more than $1 billion in electricity cost savings and power the equivalent of nearly 2 million homes. Those last two lines are the department’s equivalents. They are not a bill a household has received, and the announcement does not say the money is tied to a named data centre. More than 2.6 gigawatts of generation is not the same number as 3.4 gigawatts of contracted load, and adding them together would count two different things.

The 2027 earnings guidance, $3.63 to $3.73 a share, lists among its assumptions the “Realization of expected revenues from new data center demand.” Expected revenue is a line in a forecast. A conditional commitment, of the sort Constellation was offered the day before for nuclear uprates, is not this loan: Alliant’s package is described as closed. Closed financing still has to become a plant that runs, and a contract for 3.4 gigawatts still has to become demand on a meter. Until a site takes power, the news is a signed load, a closed loan and a gigawatt that a call still treats as a prospect.