Jeff Guo

The state gives AEP Ohio a monopoly over delivering electricity in its service area.

But to keep their monopoly power in check, AEP Ohio is not allowed to set their own prices.

Instead, the prices are set by the government, the State Utility Commission.

If AEP Ohio ever wants to raise its rates, it first has to get permission from the commission.

And for years, this kind of social contract made sense.

The infrastructure expanded little by little over time, and everybody paid for it collectively.

But as more and more companies were asking to connect more and more data centers and get access to more and more power, Mark realized all this could kind of break the system and really raise prices for residential customers.

Or the data center company could show up, connect to power, but just take forever to start using and paying for all the electricity they asked for.

Or they could change their mind and close up shop after a year or two.

If any of that happened, it would be the rest of AEP Ohio's customers who would end up getting stuck footing the bill.

Like you say that I'm the president of AEP Ohio and somebody's... Yeah, I sometimes just want to be Mark.

If AEP Ohio raised rates for residential customers to connect all these data centers, it would, to say the least, be pretty politically unpopular.

And remember, if Mark wants to raise rates, he has to get permission from the Public Utility Commission, which is appointed by the governor...

Who has to answer to voters?

So Mark had to find a way to thread this needle.

What they came up with was a pretty innovative set of new rules.

Rules just for data centers.

AEP Ohio would require data centers to start paying for the vast majority of the energy they requested within four years.

And the data centers had to put up millions of dollars in case they didn't end up sticking around.

The new rules got approved by the State Utility Commission and went into place earlier this year.