Keith Romer

For one, a data center company could ask to be connected, get AEP Ohio to build all this infrastructure, and then just never actually build that data center.

Data centers did have to help pay for the new infrastructure built specifically for them, but only to a point.

They were required to pay for at least 60% of the energy they asked for, whether or not they used it.

Mark worried, though, that that might not be enough.

Let's say it's a billion dollars to build that infrastructure.

Mark, we should say, was under some real pressure here.

Pretty much everybody's electricity bills were going up.

And to the extent that people could put a face to the problem, it was Mark's face.

In 2023, AAP Ohio made a big decision.

They were going to stop letting any new data centers sign up for power.

They essentially pressed pause on the whole process.

And Mark and his team got to work trying to find a lasting solution.

Finally, they would make data centers pay for a larger share of the energy they asked for.

Instead of requiring them to pay at least 60% of the power they had requested, AEP Ohio was going to ask for as much as 85%.

Mark acknowledges that residential customers will still pay for some of the infrastructure costs from data centers, but it should be a lot less now.

So if the problem isn't distribution, how are data centers making things more expensive?

Well, the next place to look is one step further up the chain at what is called transmission.

So not how electricity gets moved around on a local scale, but on a much bigger scale.

The grid of giant power lines that connects power plants from one state to customers hundreds of miles away.

Cameron works for AEP, which is the parent company of AEP Ohio.