Bill would require large data centers to report annual electricity use to Montana regulators

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 hundreds of megawatts. She said one press release suggested new load "a minimum of 50 megawatts beginning in 2027 with growth to possibly 250 or more by 2029," and that the reporting requirement would help regulators and lawmakers plan for resource adequacy and transmission needs.

Proponents included a PSC commissioner speaking as an individual, a representative of the Environmental Information Center and a former PSC commissioner. Dr. Annie Bukeachek (not speaking for the PSC) said HB 263 is a "good first step" toward demand-side information. Environmental Information Center witness Anne Hedges cited Lawrence Berkeley Lab and other projections that foresee rapid growth in data-center electricity use and urged policymakers to get baseline data to avoid sudden rate or reliability impacts.

Tom Schneider, a three-term former PSC commissioner, supported the bill but said annual energy alone is not enough for full planning; he recommended collecting peak-demand and seasonal data as well and stressed that transmission projects to serve large new loads can take years. Carl Borquist, an informational witness from Absaroka Energy, told the committee under a confidentiality restriction that his firm had been contacted by multiple hyperscalers seeking 500–1,000 megawatts for campus-sized developments.

Committee members probed the bill’s scope: who must report (the bill as written requires the data center/business to report), whether self-generation must be reported (the sponsor said the bill requires the facility’s reporting regardless of energy source but could be amended to exclude fully self-supplied operations), whether the requested figures are already available through utilities’ integrated resource plans (witnesses said they are not currently collected in a standardized way), and why March 1 was selected for filing (drafter and PSC staff practices influenced timing).

Sponsor closing: Sullivan said she intended the bill to be an information-gathering step, not a regulatory limit or endorsement for or against data centers. The committee concluded the hearing; no committee vote appears in the transcript.