Bill
HB 922
Prohibits residential electric rate increases from data-center demand and requires data centers to bear all related costs through separate contracts or rates.
HB 922 (2026) – Louisiana
Utility/Rates: Prohibits increases in household electric rates due to data center demand and establishes cost-causation requirements
Overview
- Purpose: To prevent electric utilities regulated by the Louisiana Public Service Commission (PSC) from raising household electric rates as a result of new electric demand from data centers, and to ensure that costs associated with data centers are recovered only from data center customers.
- Effective date: Applies to actions taken on or after the act’s effective date (or governor’s signature if enacted without a timely signature).
Key Definitions
- Commission: Louisiana Public Service Commission.
- Datacenter: Facility or group of facilities used for digital data storage/processing (e.g., cloud computing, AI training/inference, cryptocurrency mining, large-scale servers) that imposes new electric demand of 50 megawatts or more.
- Household customer: Residential electric customer of a public utility regulated by the PSC.
- New electric demand for data centers: Incremental load and related costs attributable to serving or interconnecting a data center (generation, transmission, distribution, upgrades, etc.).
Main Provisions
1) Prohibition on rate increases for households
- No electric public utility under PSC jurisdiction may increase the price, rate, or charge paid by a household customer as a direct or indirect result of new electric demand from data centers.
- Utilities may not recover any costs attributable to data center demand from household customers.
2) Cost allocation and cost-causation
- The PSC must ensure that all costs tied to data center demand (generation, transmission, distribution, fuel, O&M, depreciation, return on investment, stranded costs, etc.) are allocated solely to the data center customer(s) through special contracts, tariffs, or rate classes that exclude household costs.
3) PSC rulemaking and cost-causation framework
- The PSC must promulgate rules implementing cost-causation principles for data centers, including:
- Mandatory separate rate classes or special contracts ensuring full cost recovery from the data center without cross-subsidization.
- Prohibition of subsidies to non-data-center customers (explicit or implicit).
- Long-term contracts (minimum 15 years) with data centers addressing full cost responsibility, including overruns, decommissioning, and potential early termination/abandonment.
- Procedures for independent prudence reviews of utility investments serving data centers.
4) Regulatory action denial
- The PSC must deny any rate adjustment, tariff change, or certificate of public convenience and necessity (CPCN) that would cause household customers to bear any portion of data center-related costs.
Scope and Limitation
- The act applies to actions taken on or after its effective date.
- It adds new R.S. 45:1350.1–1350.3 (Part IX: Energy Costs from Data Centers).
Impact and Implications
- Household protections: Strong guardrails to prevent data center costs from growing residential electric bills.
- Data center accountability: Shifts financial responsibility for data-center-related investments and ongoing costs to data-center customers or specific contracts.
- Utility planning: Requires PSC to develop rigorous rate structures and long-term contracts to avoid cross-subsidization.
- Market effects: Could influence how data centers approach expansion (e.g., negotiating dedicated contracts rather than serving through general rate classes).
Notes
- The bill emphasizes prohibiting implicit or explicit subsidies to non-data-center customers.
- It envisions independent prudence reviews for investments connected to data centers.
Compiled from official sources — confirm details with the bill’s official record.
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