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Bill would require large data centers to report annual electricity use to Montana regulators
Summary
House Bill 263 would require data centers and digital-mining businesses to report prior-year and anticipated megawatt-hours to the PSC and ETIC to help regulators assess resource adequacy and transmission needs; witnesses described potential new loads ranging from tens to hundreds of megawatts and urged the reporting baseline.
House Energy Committee — Representative Katie Sullivan introduced House Bill 263, a bill requiring certain large electricity users — described in testimony as data centers and digital-asset mining businesses — to report annual megawatt-hours consumed in the previous calendar year and anticipated consumption for the current calendar year to the Public Service Commission (PSC) and the Legislative Interim Committee on Energy, Technology and Federal Relations (ETIC).
Sullivan told the committee that new technologies — AI workloads, electric-vehicle charging and cloud computing — are driving rapid load growth and that Montana has seen recent announcements suggesting new data centers could seek tens to…
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