The press release went out on September 16, 2026, the day the Ratepayer Protection Act passed the House 417 to 3. Its second paragraph, from the sponsor, Rep. Gabe Evans (R-Colo.), makes the promise in the bill's name: "The bill requires that large energy load data centers be responsible for the costs of all new energy infrastructure necessary to serve them."
Near the bottom, after the words "The bill suggests" and the list they introduce, comes this: "The legislation preserves state flexibility by requiring regulators to consider the large-load standard without mandating one specific rate structure."
Responsible, then consider. "Responsible" belongs to the standard the bill writes. "Consider" is what the bill does with it: hand it to your state's utility regulators, with a deadline to weigh it and the freedom to turn it down.
Let me say where I stand, since what follows is skeptical of a bill whose principle I share: whoever creates a cost should pay it. But in June, writing about the industry's pledges to pay its way, I put it like this: "A press release is not a tariff." A bill faces the same test, and this one would make your state hold a hearing, unless it has already acted.
A standard, two deadlines, and a way out
So what did the House pass? Less than its name promises — and more than nothing.
The text the House passed writes a standard: a large data center's rates "shall be designed to recover" from it "the full, incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve the load," including if it later walks away from its contract, and the utility must require financial assurances before building. It covers facilities that mainly run computing and data storage, with "a peak electric demand of 100 megawatts or more at a single site or campus," that sign up for service once it becomes law.
So far so good. Then comes what the release calls flexibility. The standard goes into the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 (PURPA, if you want to sound like a regulator), a law that expressly allows a state to decide a standard is not appropriate and decline it. Under a heading that says it plainly, "Obligations to consider and determine," the bill gives each state commission a year to begin considering the standard or set a hearing date, and two years to "complete the consideration and make the determination," which PURPA says must follow public notice and a hearing. Utilities that set their own rates (some co-ops and city-owned utilities do) decide for themselves.
A determination can be no. The bill's own committee says each state decides "whether and how to implement the standard, if at all." Where a state, before enactment, has already implemented the standard "(or a comparable standard)" for a utility, held a proceeding on it or voted on it in the legislature, the deadlines don't apply to that utility at all. The bill never defines comparable.
None of this split the House. Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.) introduced the bill with Evans in June; the committee narrowed it from any 100-megawatt non-residential customer to data centers and approved it 52 to 0. As of October 3, 2026, it is not law: the Senate has not yet agreed even to take it up.
Thirteen days later, the grid regulator pointed at the states too
Is "consider" just Congress being timid? The federal grid regulator ended up pointing the same way.
In July, PJM Interconnection — which runs the grid across 13 states and the District of Columbia — ran a $16.4 billion auction for power supplies in the 2028/29 delivery year and still came up 6,831.3 megawatts short of its reliability requirement. PJM's independent market monitor, Monitoring Analytics, attributes $6.3 billion of it to data centers. (PJM notes that the auction's value is not the total cost to customers.) To fill the gap, PJM proposed a backstop procurement of about 6.8 gigawatts and planned to start taking offers on September 30.
On September 29, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) accepted the plan and then suspended it for five months, to February 28, 2027. It found the design just and reasonable apart from three pieces (cost allocation, exit rules for transmission owners, and collateral) and sent those back for briefing, saying PJM's cost-allocation method "may be unjust and unreasonable." In a concurrence, Chairman Laura Swett wrote that FERC would not be forced into accepting "a deeply flawed, eleventh-hour procurement mechanism with billion-dollar implications for consumers." Commissioner Lindsay See wrote: "Existing customers should not be left paying costs attributable to new demand."
Then who splits the bill? The order says states have authority over how wholesale costs "are recovered through retail rates," and then puts it more plainly: "The PJM states have their own role to play." PJM's July 31 filing had already assumed as much. It calls it an "unexpected event" if no state-set allocation is reported; in that case PJM would spread the charges across the companies serving each zone by their share of peak demand (the way it bills capacity today), and it proposes no backup method for dividing them among retail customers.
Congress says consider. FERC says retail recovery is the states' call. PJM's fallback stops where state authority begins. As I wrote in August, "the commission in your state capital decides how much of any of it reaches your bill." (As of October 3, 2026, two dockets that piece covered are on hold: on August 14, FERC paused PJM's for 90 days and MISO's on the same terms, with responses due November 16, 2026.)
The case for a bill that only asks
Is a bill that only asks worth passing? The Senate split on exactly that.
On September 17, Sen. Jon Husted (R-Ohio), who leads the Senate companion, asked the Senate to pass it by unanimous consent. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) objected: "It is not enough for us to tell States to consider making data centers pay for grid updates."
On September 30 the Senate fell three votes short of the 60 needed even to take the bill up, 57 to 43, with four Democrats joining every Republican. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called it "toothless" and said Democrats want data centers to cover their costs "by law, not by suggestion or hope or whim." Majority Leader John Thune said it was "difficult to conclude" that Democrats had any reason beyond "the desire to deny Republicans another win in an election year," and Heinrich called it "nothing more than a messaging bill on the eve of an election." Each side accused the other of campaigning.
The bill's best case deserves a fair hearing. First, it forces the question in states that have never asked it. Husted, before the vote: "The States can't avoid this. They are going to have to confront the issue. Our bill will require them to do that." True of the deadline. (A state can still say no, but in writing, after a public hearing.)
Second, the standard reaches past the wires. According to Utility Dive, ClearView Energy Partners said that including power-supply costs could be significant, noting that interconnection agreements typically cover only transmission and distribution. Third, retail rates are the states' business, as FERC's order says. Fourth, states are moving anyway. By the count of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities and welcomed the bill, 25 states have approved at least one large-load tariff, and seven have tariffs pending, as of September 2026.
I find all four points fair, and none moves the decision out of your state. The critics say a hearing guarantees nothing; the supporters say a hearing is as far as Washington should go. Both are describing the same machine, and the committee's "if at all" is its best summary.
The Senate sponsor's home state already decided, for one utility
What does deciding look like when a commission goes all the way? Ohio, Husted's state, has an answer — and it took fourteen months.
On July 9, 2025, after a contested case that began with AEP Ohio's application in May 2024, the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio ordered AEP Ohio to file data-center tariffs. It adopted a settlement reached by AEP Ohio, the commission's staff, the Ohio Consumers' Counsel and others; the counsel, Ohio's residential advocate, calls it a "consumer-focused settlement." The tariff has been in effect since July 23, 2025.
Read the tariff itself and you find the numbers the federal bill leaves to "consider." It applies above 25 megawatts (a quarter of the bill's threshold). After a ramp of up to four years, a data center's minimum bill follows a sliding scale that, in the tariff's words, "will not exceed 85% of the total contract capacity," used or not. Contracts run the ramp plus eight years, with minimum charges owed for the whole initial term even if the customer cuts back or quits, unless, five years past the ramp, it pays an exit fee of 36 months of them.
The Data Center Coalition, the industry's trade group, called the decision "a stark departure from solutions enacted in other key data center markets." The free-market Buckeye Institute says the Ohio Supreme Court should reverse the tariff. The Ohio Manufacturers' Association Energy Group's appeal is still pending at the Ohio Supreme Court, with no argument date set as of October 3, 2026.
Did it work? Before the tariff, AEP Ohio reported inquiries and preliminary requests totaling more than 30,000 MW; by the tariff's September 8, 2025 deadline, customers had requested formal studies of 36 sites totaling about 13,000 megawatts. (Those are different measures, so the drop proves less than it seems.) Ohio's manufacturers say AEP is still inflating its demand forecast.
As I read the federal bill, a case like this would likely count as "a proceeding to consider implementation of the standard (or a comparable standard)" and excuse AEP Ohio from its deadlines. Look at what deciding took: fourteen months, numbers worth fighting over and an appeal still open, all for one utility's customers. The bill would ask every state to have that argument. It would not ask any of them to land where Ohio did.
Suppose the clock ever starts
What happens if some version becomes law? No enactment date exists, so this is my extrapolation, not a forecast.
Two years after a signing, the map fills with written determinations. Some states adopt the standard as written, some write their own with a lower threshold (the committee report anticipates that), some find it "not appropriate" and say why, and those that already acted skip the line.
Now suppose you learn your state's answer after it is written. You open the docket: findings, evidence, a list of who testified. The utility was there. The developers' lawyers were there. You were not, because the hearing notice ran wherever your commission runs its notices. (PURPA requires "public notice and hearing." It does not require that you see either.)
Or take two neighboring PJM states in 2028/29, the first delivery year the backstop would cover. One commission has written a rule pointing backstop charges at the large new loads that drove them. The other has written nothing, so PJM's fallback spreads them across the companies serving each zone by peak demand and leaves the retail split for later. Same grid, same shortage, two answers to who pays, and one is still blank.
Nearly everyone likes the principle. The fight is over one verb.
Who is right? Across the spectrum there is near-agreement on who should pay, and a real split over whether "consider" gets you there.
The libertarian Reason Foundation backs the bill as "an economically rational approach toward federal advisory standards" and wants it to cover every future customer over 100 megawatts, not only data centers. The Data Center Coalition backed the initial version but objects that the committee's changes "single out the data center industry," and says the industry is committed to "paying our full energy costs."
Free-market analysts at R Street warn: "There is no magic wand to fully insulate ratepayers under current circumstances." AEI's James Pethokoukis argues more data centers might mean cheaper electricity, citing a pre-print by researchers at the Electric Power Research Institute that estimated data centers caused average U.S. retail rates to "fall modestly" from 2015 to 2024. ("No guarantees going forward, of course," he adds.)
In the center, Brookings concluded that turning the White House's voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge into enforceable protections "now depends on state legislatures, utility commissions, and governors." From the consumer side, Consumer Reports noted that "adoption itself would be optional," though its Chris Harto still called the bill "a useful step in the right direction."
On the left, Public Citizen's Tyson Slocum called it "a far cry from any sort of comprehensive solution," though he supports it as a first step that would "give some ammunition to state advocates in states where there are currently zero standards." Food & Water Watch summed it up as "consider, not adopt" and noted there is "no requirement that data centers will have to pay for wholesale market costs stemming from their energy demand."
Of the PJM costs the market monitor attributes to data centers, Ari Peskoe, who directs Harvard's Electricity Law Initiative, told NPR: "Everyone pays those costs."
Set Reason beside Food & Water Watch and the disagreement shrinks to a verb: one calls the standards advisory and backs them, the other calls them "consider, not adopt" and doesn't.
What does this mean for you?
Bill or no bill, the decision already sits with your state. To get into the room:
Find who decides. Find your state's utility commission in the directory kept by NARUC, the state regulators' national association. If your utility sets its own rates, its board is your audience.
Check whether your state already decided. The utility trade group's list names approved and pending large-load tariffs state by state, with docket numbers. Ohio's entry shows AEP Ohio's approved tariff beside pending proposals from FirstEnergy's three Ohio utilities, Duke Energy Ohio and AES Ohio. It tracks tariffs before state commissions, so co-ops and city-owned utilities that set their own rates may not appear.
Get on the record. In Ohio, the consumer counsel's guide explains how to file a public comment: search the case number in the commission's docketing system and click "File a Comment." Speak at a local public hearing, and "your statement then becomes part of the record that the PUCO Commissioners use to make decisions on your utility rates." Commissions such as California's take public comment online; check your own.
Ask the questions that decide who pays. Is the threshold 25 megawatts, like AEP Ohio's, or 100, like the bill's? What share of reserved capacity must a data center pay for, used or not, and for how long? What does leaving cost? Is there collateral? Does it cover new generation, or only the wires?
If your utility is in PJM's territory, ask how your commission would split PJM's backstop charges among retail customers, and what it has done since January 2026, when all 13 PJM governors agreed to steer those costs toward new data centers that have neither brought their own capacity nor agreed to be cut off in a shortage. PJM said it would give an update at the Market Implementation Committee on October 7; as of October 3, 2026, it had not filed a revised plan.
If some version ever becomes law, PURPA says any participant or intervenor in a proceeding on a utility's rates "may request, and shall obtain," a consideration and determination of the standard. That is your lever in a state that would rather not look.
The lesson, as I see it
The House voted 417 to 3 for a principle. What it passed is a hearing requirement with a two-year clock — and a hearing can end in no.
Two of HAIA's recent data-center pieces ran into the same kind of word. On September 4, I noted that New York's order says localities "may use the framework" to negotiate with developers. On October 1, I warned that without a number, a referee and a consequence, the most consumer-friendly sentence in Texas's order would be "the one that binds no one." The best sentence in the Ratepayer Protection Act binds no one either, until a commission adopts it.
My vote? Keep the clock, and add one requirement: a commission that finds the standard "not appropriate" should have to say, in the same written determination, who pays for the upgrades instead and what large customers will pay, in public. As Peskoe told NPR, "a lot of the data about how much particular data centers are paying is hidden behind non-disclosure agreements."
A narrower version with a requirement in it already has bipartisan sponsors: on September 30, Senators Capito, Lee, Whitehouse and Heinrich introduced a permitting bill that, per their release, would require data centers to pay for "all of their associated transmission costs." As of October 3, 2026, it sits in committee, but the Senate's next scheduled vote, on November 9, is on taking up what its press gallery calls "the legislative vehicle for the permitting reform bill." Until Congress enacts a version with a consequence attached, the principle the House endorsed lives in a docket in your state capital, waiting to see who shows up.
Who pays for the AI build-out will be settled one docket at a time. The HAIA Foundation exists so that people, not just the companies building the machines, have a seat in that room. Subscribe to hear which room is next.