Senate blocks data center cost bill affecting Draper ratepayers

A bill that could have shielded Draper-area utility customers from future data center grid costs died in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday, Sept. 30.

The Senate voted 57-43 on a procedural motion for the Ratepayer Protection Act, falling three votes short of the 60 needed to open debate. Only four Democrats crossed party lines to support the measure, the Deseret News reported.

The bill would have required state utility regulators to consider standards holding data centers that use at least 100 megawatts of electricity at a single site responsible for grid upgrade costs. Under its terms, those rates would stick even if a data center canceled its agreement or stopped buying power after upgrades were built.

The House had passed the same bill Sept. 16 in a 417-3 vote. All four members of Utah's House delegation voted yes: Reps. Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy, Burgess Owens and Mike Kennedy.

Why it stalled

Democrats argued the bill's requirements were suggestions, not mandates. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the measure "a fraud" and said its key shortcoming was "one word: Optional."

Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the top Democrat on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, had blocked an earlier fast-track attempt in mid-September. "If voluntary pledges and suggestions worked, American families and businesses wouldn't be shouldering those costs right now," Heinrich said in a statement to the Deseret News at the time.

Republicans blamed Democrats for blocking a bill their own House members had overwhelmingly supported. Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio, the bill's sponsor, said after the vote: "The Democrats are obstructionists on lowering electricity prices for American consumers."

Draper-area impact

The vote matters along the Wasatch Front because Rocky Mountain Power, the main electricity provider for much of Utah including Draper, serves the territory where Silicon Slopes data centers are expanding. Utah has 48 data centers by one count, according to a FOX 13 News investigative series launched Tuesday, Sept. 29.

Michele Beck, director of the Utah Office of Consumer Services, told FOX 13 on Sept. 29 that the challenge of regulating the industry keeps growing. "We sort of solve one problem, then we identify the next problem," Beck said.

A USC researcher told Utah lawmakers during an Aug. 19 interim session that investor-owned utilities like Rocky Mountain Power saw no effect on power prices from data centers between 2020 and 2025. He said he expected larger facilities coming online now to change that picture, according to the Deseret News.

In March, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI signed a voluntary White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge agreeing to cover data center infrastructure costs. Democrats argued that pledge is not enforceable.