Behind the scenes: FOX6 News gets rare look at American Transmission Company

MILWAUKEE -- It's a utility that helps keep the lights on -- and FOX6 News was given a rare look at how it's all done on Tuesday, September 15th. We take you on a tour of the operations center of the American Transmission Company (ATC).

When you're buzzed through the multiple security layers at ATC's operations center, it feels a bit like walking into mission control.

"Essentially what you're looking at is a quasi geographical representation of the ATC network," said Mike Londo, Reliability Administrator for ATC.

FOX6 News was asked not to show closeups of that representation because it contains sensitive information. But we did get a sneak peek at the people who keep the network running.

"We're constantly getting updates from the equipment that's measuring everything out in the field -- and it's constantly coming in and it updates about every four to six seconds," said Londo.

If you're not familiar with ATC, they are part of the cycle that gets power to your home.

"There's generators that produce the power. There's the transmission operators that move large blocks of power around. And then there's the distribution operators that actually serve people's homes and businesses. And we're that operation in the middle," said Mike Rowe, President and CEO for ATC.

Rowe says as the country adjusts how it is generating power, ATC has modify its system too.

"As the utilities in this area make changes, like if they retire a coal plant and they build a gas plant, we'll have to tweak the system to connect the gas plant and to make sure that even with the coal plant gone that we can...keep the lights on," said Rowe.

We are told ATC routinely tries to plan for its future a decade in advance -- making plans for a variety of possible scenarios.

Founded in 2001, we are told ATC was the first multi-state transmission only utility in the nation. It covers Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois.