UtilitiesTuesday, November 3
SRP's board weighs a data center pause, but its lawyer says state law likely stands in the way
The Good Day Chandler team
If you get power from SRP, whose territory includes parts of Mesa, Tempe and Chandler, the board talked data centers Monday. Members asked utility staff about curtailing new data center interconnection agreements, amid concerns that residential customers may end up subsidizing the AI boom. Director Krista O'Brien said she'd heard SRP plans to grow by 4,700 megawatts by 2035, with 3,000 of those going to data centers. Chief legal executive Michael O'Connor said that seemed plausible.
“I find it very hard to believe that we are not shifting costs to other customer classes.”
Data centers could take 3,000 of SRP's 4,700 megawatts of planned growth
3,000 MWMW of planned growth by 2035 that could be data centers
Source: KJZZ
View as table
| Value | |
|---|---|
| MW of planned growth by 2035 that could be data centers | 3,000 MW |
O'Connor said a moratorium is unlikely to pass because state law says SRP must serve any eligible customer. John Tucker, SRP's director of financial strategy, said SRP collects costs tied to 80% of a data center's peak demand up front, and that data centers pay more than it costs to serve them.
80%of a data center's peak-demand costs SRP collects up front
KJZZ reports that's an industry-leading level of developer collateral.
Source: KJZZ
- Infrastructure bills to data centers: "nine-figure," Tucker said
- Water supply: little public discussion before executive session
- Board then met in executive session on the item
On a lighter SRP note, a great horned owl returned to the wild at a Mesa park, released by the SRP worker who saved her weeks earlier.