YourVoice.Now Summary
Your MoneyCorporate BenefitsTransparency & AccountabilityHuge data centers could be made to pay the full cost of grid upgrades built for them — if your state adopts the rule.
Your Money
Your state's utility regulators would have to consider making the biggest data centers pay for the grid upgrades built to serve them. If a state adopts the rule, those costs would not be spread onto other customers' bills.
Corporate Benefits
Data centers using 100 megawatts or more at one site would owe the full added cost of new power plants, lines, and other upgrades built for them. The cost would still be theirs if they end the contract or stop buying power early.
Before a utility builds an upgrade for a big data center, it would have to collect money or a financial guarantee from that data center to cover the cost.
Transparency & Accountability
State regulators, and utilities that set their own rates, must start weighing the rule within 1 year, hold a public hearing, and decide within 2 years. The decision must be in writing and public. States that already acted on a similar rule are exempt from these deadlines.
More about this bill
Your state would have to weigh a rule keeping the cost of grid upgrades for huge data centers off your power bill. The rule covers data centers that use 100 megawatts or more at one site. Their power rates would have to cover the full cost of new power plants, lines, and other grid upgrades built for them. That would still apply if a data center ends its contract or stops buying power. Before building those upgrades, the utility would have to get money or a financial guarantee from the data center first. State utility regulators, and utilities that set their own rates, would have 1 year to start weighing the rule. They would have 2 years to decide, after a public hearing. They would not have to adopt it, but a no must be explained in writing. States that already adopted, weighed, or voted on a similar rule would skip these deadlines. The bill was introduced in the Senate in July 2026.
Congressional Summary
Ratepayer Protection Act The bill requires state utility regulators and nonregulated utilities to consider implementing a standard to hold certain large-load customers responsible for the costs associated with any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade of electric service necessary to serve such customers. A large-load customer means a non-residential electric consumer that enters, or requests to enter, an agreement concerning the sale of electric energy primarily to operate information technology infrastructure and related systems pertaining to data storage and computational applications and services (e.g., data centers) that have a peak electric demand of 100 megawatts or more at a single site or campus. Specifically, the bill requires states to consider implementing a federal standard for large-load customers. The standard must require rates charged by electric utilities for providing electric service to a large-load customer to be designed to recover from the large-load customer the full, incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve such customer. This rate must include the costs that would be incurred if the large-load customer terminates an agreement with the electric utility pertaining to the sale of electric energy or otherwise ceases the purchase of energy from the electric utility. Under the standard, an electric utility must require the large-load customer to provide to the utility financial assurances or contributions to cover the cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade that is necessary to serve the load of a large-load customer before the utility makes any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade.
Details
- Congress
- 119th
- Chamber
- Senate
- Status
- summarized
- Action
- Introduced in Senate
- Action Date
- 2026-07-16
- Date Added
- 2026-09-25
- Source
- Congress.gov →
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