Data Centers/Reliable Affordable Service: American Public Power Association Letter to U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee

The American Public Power Association (“APPA”) submitted an April 20th letter to the following Members of the United States House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee:

• The Honorable Brett Guthrie, Chairman, Energy & Commerce Committee.
• The Honorable Frank Pallone, Ranking Member, Energy & Commerce Committee.
• The Honorable Bob Latta, Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy, Energy & Commerce Committee.
• The Honorable Kathy Castor, Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Energy, Energy & Commerce Committee.

The Subcommittee on Energy will be holding a hearing titled:

AI and the Grid: Meeting Growing Power Demand While Protecting Ratepayers (“Hearing”).

APPA describes itself as a national trade organization representing the interests of the nation’s 2,000 not-for-profit, community-owned electric utilities. Public power utilities are stated to be found in every state except Hawaii and collectively serve over 55 million people in 49 states and five U.S. territories.

By way of introduction, the April 28th letter notes that manufacturing, electrification, and data center deployment are driving a new era of load growth after decades of relatively flat load growth for the electric industry. Additional introductory points include:

• While overall demand from data centers is growing and is projected to continue, nationally, the average individual data center load doubled from 150 to 300 megawatts (MW) between 2023 and 2024.
• Growth in demand from data centers is creating not only national reliability and affordability challenges, but also local, utility-specific challenges and opportunities.
• There is a need to find solutions that will allow public power utilities to build the grid/generation infrastructure needed to serve data centers in a manner that does not negatively impact:
  • Grid reliability.
  • Affordability of electricity for existing public power customers.

The topics addressed in the letter include:

• Reliability
• Federal Permitting
• Technical Assistance / Load Forecasting
• Protecting Customers
• Transmission/Advanced Transmission Technologies
• Tax and Regulatory Challenges
• Opportunities

A copy of the letter can be found here.