Illinois tees up balcony solar

This roundup of energy news headlines comes from our Midwest Energy News newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning.

SOLAR

• Illinois lawmakers advance legislation that would require utilities to allow customers to install plug-in solar systems, known as balcony solar, to help offset energy costs. (Canary Media)

• Wisconsin regulators approve We Energies’ purchase of two solar projects for $360 million that would help power hyperscale data centers. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

• A local union in central Ohio is urging residents to vote to allow commercial scale solar projects in townships throughout the county. (News 5)

• Neighbors push back on a developer’s plan for a 200 MW solar project in rural western Michigan, citing concerns over a loss of farmland. (FOX 17)

• Minnesota’s low- and moderate-income community solar program has installed 179 MW across 133 individual gardens as of late 2025, though the program is now capped with limited space for future projects. (PV Magazine)

OIL & GAS

• Energy giant BP locked out more than 800 union workers at its northwestern Indiana refinery on Thursday after the company and the workers’ union failed to reach a contract agreement. (Chicago Sun-Times)

ELECTRIC VEHICLES

• Kansas House lawmakers pass a bill to prevent utilities from including EV charging infrastructure costs in customer rates, following pushback from businesses that said it gave utilities an unfair advantage. (Kansas Reflector)

NUCLEAR

• A bipartisan group of Minnesota lawmakers push the state to lift the state’s 32-year-old ban on new nuclear reactors to help the state meet its 2040 zero-carbon energy portfolio deadline. (Minnesota Reformer)

CLEAN ENERGY

• Advocates see major potential for waste heat playing a much larger role in the Great Lakes region’s clean energy transition, though operational, funding and political barriers remain. (Circle of Blue)

GRID

• Google will integrate 1 GW of demand response into its utility contracts in the South and Midwest to help balance its data centers’ power usage. (E&E News)

COAL

• The administration’s orders to keep six coal plants in five states online under emergency orders have cost ratepayers more than $230 million, according to a Sierra Club analysis. (Utility Dive)

DATA CENTERS

• The Nebraska Senate advances a bill regulating the construction of private power plants for data centers, requiring any projects to connect to the public utility and pay for necessary upgrades. (Nebraska Public Media)

• Ohio House lawmakers pass a bill to create a data center study commission, though the measure did not include an effort to pause a data center sales tax break. (Ohio Capital Journal)

• Indianapolis-area officials approve plans for a $4 billion, 900,000-square-foot data center campus with a 250 MW capacity. (WIBC)

CLEAN TECH

• A Minnesota farm cooperative is working to produce the state’s first supply of commercial-scale, locally made ammonia fertilizer using excess wind energy. (Ag Week)