Big tech companies have proposed new power-rate terms in Ohio after utility companies there recently requested prepayment for data center costs. The industries are working on innovative ways to supply rapidly increasing electricity demand from data centers. Reuters reports:
Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon, along with other companies, have proposed an alternative framework for how data centers pay for power in Ohio, according to documents filed with regulators on Thursday.
The companies had been fighting a proposal brought by utility AEP Ohio in May that would require data centers and cryptocurrency miners to provide pre-payments and other financial assurances for their massive energy needs. AEP said at the time it was overloaded with requests from those two groups. […]
The explosion in power requests prompted AEP Ohio this year to pause new contracts for data centers, the company said when it filed for the tariffs.
Big Tech, power companies, including Constellation Energy, and One Energy Enterprises, along with others, later opposed AEP.
Some of those companies have now offered to settle the case by laying out their own set of rules before regulators. Those terms include broadening the range of customers that would fall under AEP’s rules to include any industry with loads of more than 50 megawatts at a single location. The proposal also changes the circumstances under which big new power customers must pay for costs such as transmission upgrades.
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