If you pay a power bill, the White House pledge has a name for you. On March 4, 2026, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge along with OpenAI, Oracle and xAI. The text the White House published that day commits each company to build, bring or buy the new generation its new demand requires, "paying the full cost of those resources," and to pay for the grid upgrades its data centers need "to ensure that these expenses are not passed on to the ordinary household." You are the ordinary household.
The same four companies put their names to a second document, dated and filed on October 6, 2026: a proposed settlement with Duke Energy over how North Carolina should charge its biggest new power users. (Meta signed through a subsidiary, Andale LLC.) This one has a cutoff date. "This tariff applies to all letter agreements (LA) and electric service agreements (ESA) executed on and after June 1, 2026, for Large Load Customers," the attached tariff begins. A few lines down: "An ESA that is initially executed prior to June 1, 2026 that is subsequently renewed, extended or assigned pursuant to the terms of the ESA shall not be subject to this tariff."
So what happens to a data center that signed its service agreement with Duke in, say, April? By the deal's own terms, the new rules don't reach it (with one exception for big expansions, which I'll come to).
I want to be fair to both documents. The pledge was voluntary from the start (the word is in its text), and the settlement asks more of new data centers than Duke's current rate does. But read October against March, clause by clause, and the promises turn into questions — who pays for the power plants, who pays for the wires, and which customers count as new.
What the four companies promised in March
What else did they sign up for? One more commitment matters here: "Companies will voluntarily negotiate new, separate rate structures with their utilities and relevant State governments wherever they build data centers," and pay those rates "whether they use the electricity or not."
Each company spoke for itself in a White House release the next day. Amazon said the commitments "establish an important baseline that will protect ratepayers." Google said its support "affirms our long-held commitment to protect energy affordability for American households." Meta said the pledge "ensures families aren't the ones footing the bill for AI's energy consumption." Microsoft called it "an important step" and credited the President's leadership "to ensure that data centers don't contribute to higher electricity prices for consumers."
On July 23, Duke Energy joined the pledge. North Carolina's attorney general, Jeff Jackson (a Democrat; the pledge is a Republican administration's), answered the same day: "a promise in Washington doesn't lower a power bill in North Carolina. We're calling on Duke to make that same promise to the Utilities Commission, in writing, where it can be enforced."
In June I wrote that "A press release is not a tariff." Neither is a pledge. On October 6, North Carolina got a proposed tariff. So what does it say?
What the October 6 deal asks of a new data center
Who signed? Duke's two North Carolina utilities; the Public Staff, the state's utility consumer advocate; Amazon Data Services, Andale, Google and Microsoft; an industrial customers' group; and the Defense Department with other federal agencies.
Who's covered? Customers contracting for 50 megawatts or more with an expected load factor of 80 percent or higher, or for 150 megawatts or more at any load factor. (Load factor measures how steadily a customer draws power; round-the-clock users score high.)
Who isn't? Any service agreement first signed before June 1, 2026, even when it is later renewed, extended or assigned to another company under its own terms. And any customer "already receiving service as of June 1, 2026" that signs a new agreement afterward. The one carve-back: an expansion added on or after June 1 that "by itself" meets the size and load-factor tests is covered, even for a customer the rest of the tariff exempts.
Which rate? "The customer will be served under Schedule HLF." The deal, as WFAE put it, "repurposes an existing tariff, making it compulsory." HLF is open to any customer "with a kilowatt demand of 1,000 kW or more" — one megawatt, a fiftieth of the smallest customer this tariff covers. Duke calls it "a separate rate established for large loads." It is separate from what households pay — but not from what a one-megawatt factory on the same schedule pays.
What does it add? Real obligations, most of which Duke's existing rate lacked:
A minimum bill from the start. Billing demand "will not be less than 75% of contract demand," so a customer that contracts for 100 megawatts pays the capacity part of its bill (not the energy part) on at least 75 — whatever it draws. HLF already had that 75 percent floor from a new installation's 13th month; the deal applies it "as soon as contract demand is in effect." The Public Staff had raised its own proposal from 75% to 80% "after reviewing the national average," a coalition of consumer and clean-energy groups says in its reply comments, and the governor's energy task force put the national median at 80% as of late 2025.
Equipment for one customer, paid in advance, within 60 days of the letter agreement.
Shared upgrades, secured rather than paid. For transmission upgrades on the wider grid, the customer posts a letter of credit for their estimated cost. In WFAE's description, those costs "would be spread across all customers in the beginning, and paid back over the course of the data center's contract with Duke." If the customer leaves early, Duke draws on the credit for what's left of the upgrades' book value.
Long contracts, and a price for leaving. Minimum terms of at least 10 or 15 years by size (HLF asks for one), two to four years' notice, and exit damages in three parts: every minimum bill and facilities charge through the notice period, the present value of remaining facilities charges, and "25% of remaining minimum billing demand charges" after that. In Duke's illustration, a 500-megawatt customer leaving with no notice in its fourth year would owe about $587 million, and must post security to match.
What does it leave for later? Two of the three promises above. Whether large loads get a class of their own, and how the cost of new power plants is shared, wait for "the next rate base rate case," where Duke will study costs "with and without the use of separate large load class" and every party stays "free to assert their respective positions." WFAE reports that rate case "could be two years from now."
Where does it stand? As of October 13, 2026, it's a proposal awaiting the North Carolina Utilities Commission's approval, and Duke says "a decision is expected by mid-November." If approved, it would apply to service from January 1, 2027.
Isn't grandfathering normal?
It is — and that's the strongest case for this deal.
Rules that change what people pay usually apply going forward. The version of Senate Bill 730 that North Carolina's House passed would apply only to data center agreements "entered into on or after" the day it became law. Even the coalition fighting this deal proposed sparing existing customers one thing, direct charges for new facilities, because "Longstanding customers do not trigger the same load and cost growth concerns as new very large customers."
According to that coalition's summary of the record, the Defense Department and others asked to protect existing facilities, and Duke and Microsoft their recently closed deals. Duke warned of "prohibited retroactive ratemaking"; Microsoft and the Carolina Utility Customers Association cited the Constitution's Contracts Clause, though Microsoft acknowledged, the coalition notes, that the commission may change rates going forward even when that alters existing contracts.
Duke says contracts signed before June 1 "contain a full suite of similar customer protections." The cutoff reaches back four months before the filing. The new terms are a real step up from a one-year rate with no security. The Public Staff signed, and the Environmental Defense Fund's Will Scott called the deal "a step in the right direction towards making sure data centers pay the cost of grid upgrades they cause, but it fails to do the same for new power plants."
So what's the problem? Three things the fairness argument doesn't reach.
First, you can't check the word "similar." Duke's existing deals are "confidential, one-off service agreements," as Canary Media put it. Harvard Law School's Ari Peskoe and Eliza Martin warned last year, about utilities nationally rather than Duke, that "secret contracts between utilities and data centers" could be "transferring Big Tech's energy costs to the public."
Second, timing. In a filing WFAE reported on June 8, the Public Staff urged the commission to act now because many energy-intensive businesses had already signed contracts with Duke Energy for future service. The deal it later signed (yes, the same Public Staff) leaves pre-June agreements outside the tariff, and says its terms reflect "compromise" — not any party's position.
Third, the pledge itself. Its first commitment (new generation, paid at full cost) and its third (new, separate rate structures) are the two things this deal sends to the next rate case.
Wisconsin and Minnesota wrote it into the rate
What does it look like when regulators put those promises into the rate itself? Two Upper Midwest states have done it, with utilities that signed the same pledge as Duke: WEC Energy Group, which owns We Energies, and Xcel Energy.
In Wisconsin, the Public Service Commission struck an option that would have let data centers "only pay for 75% of the costs of generating facilities" (a different 75 percent from North Carolina's; this one is a share of power plant costs). Its final decision, issued May 21, 2026, makes We Energies' very large customer tariff mandatory at 100 megawatts and up, "ensuring that a distinct customer class is created," and bills transmission on at least "100 percent of initially forecasted load." In Wisconsin Watch's summary, the utility must "bill data center customers alone for power plants built to serve them." The decision has held: a petition to reopen it was denied by operation of law in July, and Oracle dropped its court challenge to the financial requirements in August; a spokesperson said the company stands by a commitment to pay its own way for power.
Minnesota started with its legislature. Its 2025 data center law, signed June 14, 2025, orders regulators to define "a very large customer class or subclass for each public utility" by December 15, 2026, and to weigh how best to see "all costs attributable to the utility's very large customers" assigned to it. Ruling on Xcel Energy's tariff in May 2026, the Public Utilities Commission created "a standalone customer class" for new loads of 100 megawatts or more, raised the minimum bill and exit fee to 80 percent of contracted capacity, and ruled that "All transmission and distribution upgrades needed to serve very large customers must be paid directly by those customers," where North Carolina's deal takes a letter of credit for shared transmission upgrades.
Now the fair counterpoint: Minnesota grandfathers too. Its statute "shall not apply to existing, renewed, or extended electric service agreements" of very large customers, or to those served before 2020. What differs is where the protection lives: in Wisconsin and Minnesota, in a class of its own with cost rules written into the rate; in North Carolina's deal, in contract terms on a shared, existing schedule. North Carolina's exemption also reaches further, naming assigned contracts and any customer already served on June 1, 2026 that signs a new agreement, where Minnesota's customer exemption stops at those served before 2020.
Picture a spring-2026 contract in 2036
What follows is my extrapolation from the text, not a forecast about any company or site.
It's 2036. A campus whose service agreement with Duke was signed in spring 2026 has been sold, and the agreement assigned to the buyer and extended as its terms allow; under the settlement's wording, it stays outside the tariff. Across the road, a campus that signed in July 2026 pays on the tariff's terms. Same grid, two rulebooks — and because the older contract is confidential, you can't see which one is gentler.
Then comes the rate case where the class question finally gets argued — possibly the first for a single Duke utility, since Duke Energy Carolinas and Duke Energy Progress combine on January 1, 2027. The settlement doesn't say whether a new class would reach the pre-June contracts.
Here is where things get interesting: none of that is locked in. The settlement binds no one unless the commission accepts all of it. The commission's own model schedule from August, as the coalition's filing reproduces it, had an independent assessor reporting to the commission set a deposit covering upgrades and a share of new generation. Picture its order pulling the deal toward that draft.
Libertarians and environmentalists agree on one thing
Who's right about the pledge? On one point, the libertarian right and the progressive left agree. "There's no enforcement," Travis Fisher of the libertarian Cato Institute said in The Hill; the Sierra Club, in a Guardian report republished by Mother Jones, called it "a paper-thin commitment." The Taxpayers Protection Alliance saw the same feature as a virtue, calling the pledge's voluntary nature "a welcome and sensible approach."
Where they part is the fix. Jon Sanders of the John Locke Foundation would let data centers "supply or contract for their own power independent from the grid," shielding everyone else "without requiring special contracts and terms with the utility" (Carolina Journal, which reported it, is the foundation's news service). R Street's Devin Hartman and Kent Chandler name the main hurdle: cost-of-service utilities, "whose business model depends on socializing costs and risk."
On the consumer side, Jackson argued in a filing with the commission, his office said the day the settlement was filed, that data centers should be in a separate rate class and be allowed to build and generate their own clean energy (on that last point, he and the free-market think tank aren't far apart). The Southern Environmental Law Center's Nick Jimenez said the deal includes "many of the right protections, but in forms that are far too lenient." From the center, Brookings notes that "only elements of the ratepayer protection pledge have been enacted into state law or regulation and only in select states."
Duke's case, from its North Carolina president, Kendal Bowman: "It's simple – data centers will pay upfront for all costs to connect to the grid." (Up front for single-customer equipment; a letter of credit for shared upgrades.)
Different fixes, one diagnosis: a promise without a mechanism leaves the bill where it was.
What does this mean for you?
If you're a Duke customer in North Carolina, put your view on the record. The commission lets consumers "submit comments about any docketed matter." The dockets are E-7, Sub 1329 (Duke Energy Carolinas) and E-2, Sub 1380 (Duke Energy Progress). Statements join the record after two or three business days, and the commission says it considers them.
Read the two clauses yourself: the "Applicability" paragraph on the first page of the settlement's Exhibit 1, and section II.B.6 on page 8.
Ask whether the old contracts will ever see daylight. The House version of Senate Bill 730 would require each data center contract signed from the day it takes effect (not the old ones) to be filed with the commission within 30 days, though either side could still mark all or any part of it confidential, to the extent the law allows. As of October 13, 2026, it sits in the Senate Rules Committee, awaiting a vote on the House's changes that can come once the legislature reconvenes October 26. Tell your state senator what you think.
Elsewhere, check two lists. Is your utility on the White House's pledge list? Does your state have a large-load tariff? By the utility industry's count, 25 states had approved at least one large load tariff as of September 2026, with 7 more pending.
Whenever someone cites the pledge, ask which tariff enforces it. Which rate schedule, which class, and who pays for the new generation?
The lesson, as I see it
The pledge's first promise covers the companies' "new energy demands." The first thing North Carolina's deal decides is what counts as new, and its answer is a date. A data center that signed its service agreement in April and won't draw power for years is, for this tariff, old — and the class and the power plants wait for a rate case that could be two years off.
The deal isn't nothing, and I won't pretend otherwise: fifteen-year terms, real exit costs and posted security are more than Duke's current rate asks of anyone. But the four companies that promised in March to keep costs off "the ordinary household" signed this deal in October — and for every contract signed before June 1, its answer is that you'll have to take Duke's word for it.
What should you watch? The commission's order, which Duke expects by mid-November; Senate Bill 730 after October 26; Minnesota's December 15 deadline; and the federal Ratepayer Protection Act, stalled in the Senate since September 30 (no action as of October 13, 2026).
My vote? If the protections in the pre-June contracts really are "similar," let the commission see enough of them to say so in public, and give very large loads like data centers a class of their own now rather than after the next rate case. Two states have already done it, with utilities that signed the same pledge.
Pledges are written in adjectives. Tariffs are written in dates. Read the dates.