Leading Energy, Power and Controls Companies
Key Industries
Energy, Power & Controls
Milwaukee is home to a robust cluster of energy, power and control companies
The Milwaukee region's energy, power + controls sector, known as the Smart Energy sector, encompasses an impressive array of companies and university research focused on energy efficiency, renewable energy, distributed generation, control technologies, and energy storage.
Among the notable players are Johnson Controls and Rockwell Automation, both esteemed Fortune 1000 companies, boasting a combined workforce of nearly 6,000 employees in the region. The automation and control landscape includes prominent businesses such as ABB, DRS Technologies, Eaton, and Astronautics.
As power generation assumes a critical role in the nation's infrastructure, particularly with the emergence of electric vehicles (EVs) and the increasing occurrence of natural disasters, Ingeteam and Generac Power Systems emerge as key players in this domain. These companies, supported by robust teams in research and development, engineering, and corporate operations within the region, drive continuous product innovations and advance their respective industries.
Overall, Wisconsin has more than 900 companies in this cluster with $38 billion in sales. This industry is one of the fastest-growing sectors in the state, with the market for energy technology expected to expand dramatically in the new few years.
Nationally recognized hub for green technologies
The Milwaukee region is a nationally recognized hub for green technologies and home to leading companies developing energy-saving or alternative energy technologies.
These include Johnson Controls, a global leader in environmental management systems for office buildings, and Ingeteam, a Spanish company that manufactures alternative energy equipment in Milwaukee’s Menomonee Valley.
Companies focused on increasing the efficiency of autos, trucks and other types of transportation include Modine Manufacturing, an international pioneer in thermal management technologies. Magnetek and Enerpac serve the market for power inverters, which are key to using the power generated by wind turbines and solar panels. Eaton Cooper Power Systems produces integrated, smart-grid technologies to optimize performance.
Academic-industry partnerships support development of alternative energy technologies
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Marquette University, the Milwaukee School of Engineering and several of the region’s private-sector employers are working together to develop microgrid technologies that will be able to store renewable energy. The Power Energy Lab at UW-Milwaukee is a collaboration between the university, the Wisconsin Energy Institute at UW-Madison and Johnson Controls that links academic research with industrial product innovation to develop a new generation of energy products with longer and stronger storage abilities.
We Energies ranked in top 10 for utility green power programs
We Energies, the region's major utility provider, is committed to balancing reliability and affordability with good environmental stewardship and plans to reduce power generation costs, reduce carbon emissions, preserve fuel diversity and maintain reliability. Two key efforts include retiring older, coal-fueled units and investing in utility-scale solar generation. We Energies has also been named one of the top 10 Utility Green Power Programs in the nation by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Environmental Collaboration Office leading efforts to make Milwaukee a world class eco-city
Milwaukee's smart energy sector is supported by the City of Milwaukee Environmental Collaboration Office, with a goal to make Milwaukee a world class eco-city. ECO's programming includes the Better Buildings Challenge that is helping Milwaukee cut energy use 20% over a decade in municipal buildings and participating commercial buildings. The comprehensive energy efficiency program provides all of the tools and resources that building owners and property managers need to effectively develop and implement energy efficiency projects in their buildings.
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