The power deal is about 1,100 megawatts

Fiona Craig’s Yahoo Finance article was published at 8:43 a.m. Eastern time on 16 October 2026, which is 12:43 UTC. It says NiSource entered a 20-year energy agreement with Microsoft to supply about 1,100 megawatts of generation for a data-center campus in northwest Indiana. Electric service is expected to begin in 2028. Later in the same article the wording becomes “scheduled to begin in 2028.” Those are not the same claim. This draft keeps the earlier “expected,” and does not treat power as already scheduled and under construction.

On cost, the article says Microsoft agreed to fund the generation and transmission infrastructure required for the facility. The agreement runs through NiSource’s generation subsidiary, GenCo, and is structured so the added infrastructure cost is not passed on to existing customers of Northern Indiana Public Service Company. The article does not say electricity is already flowing.

The customer-savings figures are projections. The article says that, with this agreement, projected savings for existing customers over the life of the data-center contracts rise from a previously announced estimate of about $1.4 billion to about $1.75 billion. It describes the increase as about $350 million. According to the company, the savings could amount to as much as $140 a year for each existing electricity customer. The same section says the projections are not guaranteed annual reductions for every customer.

The 600 megawatts of batteries should not be read as capacity reserved only for this Microsoft campus. The article says that, in connection with the agreement, GenCo contracted 600 megawatts of battery storage under a long-term tolling agreement. An affiliate of AGP Group will develop and build it, and once operating it joins a portfolio serving multiple large-load customers. The article says duration, megawatt-hours, the construction timetable, and the commissioning date were not disclosed.

The article also says several items are still undisclosed: total capital expenditure, the detailed mix of generation, and the agreement’s contribution to NiSource earnings and cash flow. Further financial detail is expected on the third-quarter earnings call. One sentence is the reporter’s own framing: large data centers, particularly facilities supporting cloud computing and artificial-intelligence workloads, need a lot of electricity. That is the article’s characterization, not a Microsoft list of what this campus will run. Jeff Riles, Microsoft’s senior director of energy markets, is quoted as saying the company is “committed to paying our own way.” This draft does not convert the dollars into yuan.