How much will utilities actually earn from large load tariffs?

Data centers are driving a wave of new utility rate structures, and how much money utilities collect from these massive power users could affect what everyday customers pay too. States are approving "large load tariffs" — special rate plans for data centers — designed to make sure these huge electricity users cover their own costs instead of shifting them onto regular homeowners. A new analysis compared several of these plans and found big differences in how much revenue they'd bring in. Oregon utility Portland General Electric could collect over $300 million a year from a single large data center, the most of any plan studied, thanks partly to a special surcharge and fuel-cost fees. Virginia's Dominion utility would collect about $241 million, while Kansas utility Evergy would bring in about $184 million for a similarly sized facility.

The gap matters because the more a utility collects from data centers through fees and surcharges, the less pressure there is to raise rates on regular households to pay for new power plants and grid upgrades these facilities require. In Colorado, a consumer watchdog group is pushing utility Xcel Energy to strengthen its proposed data center rate plan, arguing its current version would collect the least money among its peers and leaves regular customers exposed if a data center's usage falls short or comes online late.

The watchdog also wants Xcel to add a dedicated fee, similar to Oregon's, that would fund things like help paying energy bills for low-income households, home weatherization programs, and grid repairs in lower-income neighborhoods — steps meant to make sure data center growth also brings some direct benefit to nearby communities.