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Utility official says new data‑center tariff will shift infrastructure costs to developers
Summary
An East Kentucky Power Cooperative representative told a Maysville public hearing that the new data‑center rate schedule requires special contracts, prepayment and collateral so that data centers — not other cooperative members — pay for transmission, substations or generation capacity needed to serve them.
An East Kentucky Power Cooperative representative told the Maysville–Mason County planning commission that a recently approved Kentucky Public Service Commission data‑center rate schedule is designed to keep infrastructure and variable costs with the data‑center customer rather than other cooperative members.
The utility official said the tariff defines a qualifying data center (at least 15 megawatts and a load factor of 60% or higher) and requires special contracts for large projects that must be reviewed and approved by the PSC. "If EKPC must build a new transmission wire or a new substation to serve the data center, the data center bears that cost," the representative said.
The presentation described several protections the cooperative expects: prepayment of several months of variable costs into a holding account, collateral requirements to protect the cooperative if a data center closed prematurely, and collateral/dedicated resources for facilities projected to need hundreds of megawatts. The EKPC representative said those measures are designed "to keep those costs and risks with the data centers, not with our other members."
Speakers from the company proposing the development and from the Maysville–Mason County IDA said the developer would fund on‑site and off‑site infrastructure improvements. County residents and attorneys asked what guarantees would prevent ratepayers from shouldering generation or transmission investments if contractors or developers withdrew; EKPC and state officials repeatedly said the tariff and PSC oversight provide that protection, but several residents asked for binding, locally enforceable language in the ordinance or community benefit agreements.
The utility presentation also described possible scale: depending on configuration, the transcript referenced scenarios requiring new substations, high‑voltage transmission and in some cases hundreds of megawatts of additional generation capacity; those figures prompted repeated questions about who would bear long‑term generation costs.
The planning commission continued the hearing to gather further public comment and to allow staff to prepare follow‑up materials.
