Data centers could have a legal mandate to bring their own power in Pennsylvania, if a bill introduced in Harrisburg today gets steam.
Artificial intelligence companies need data centers to store the computing burden of the technology. Data centers, in turn, use massive amounts of energy. The crunch? The exponential boost of demand is expected to drastically raise energy costs as supply shrinks.
Democrats and Republicans have raised concern that homeowners, renters, and businesses will shoulder those costs in their monthly electric bills.
Multiple solutions have been pitched to address the issue; many deal with changing the fine print on how merchant generators (the power plants and suppliers) and utility companies (the quasi-public companies that own the physical infrastructure like powerlines) interact with each other and customers.
The most common solution from elected officials is the idea that data centers should “bring their own energy”.
Instead of draining the limited energy available, elected officials want projects- often operated by massive companies like Amazon and Google- to build new energy sources (natural gas plants, solar and wind, nuclear, etc) step in step with their data centers.
Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro released his GRID policy last week, part of which is asking data centers to bring their own power if they want a permitting fast track for their projects. President Donald Trump also signed a similar “bring energy” proclamation earlier this year where large developers pledged to follow the policy.
State Rep. Craig Williams, a Republican from Delaware and Chester counties, says executive actions are not enough.
He introduced HB 2372 today to legally mandate data centers to bring their energy. The bill updates other energy policy fine print; notably, it requires data centers to pay for any utility infrastructure costs that would arise from their power projects.
Williams, a former energy lawyer, says the bill could improve economic revenue for the state because of more power coming online.
“Ohio used to be a net exporter. They’re building so many data centers, they now get their power from western Pennsylvania,” Williams said. “Let’s double down and build power in Pennsylvania. And reap the economic benefit from that, the revenues from that.”
At large, he says putting the burden of energy on data center developers protects rate payers from the increasing supply and demand issues.