Bill Description: House Bill 756 would require new facilities that require 20 megawatts or more of electrical power to fund all the costs and risks associated with their use, and to prevent any rate increases for other users.
Rating: -1
Does it violate the principle of equal protection under the law? Examples include laws that discriminate or differentiate based on age, gender, or religion or which apply laws, regulations, rules, or penalties differently based on such characteristics. Conversely, does it restore or protect the principle of equal protection under the law?
House Bill 756 would create Section 61-335, Idaho Code, to address situations where a new customer is seeking to purchase 20 or more megawatts of electricity. The bill defines this need as a “new large load.” It would also apply to a current customer whose electricity needs are expected to reach 20 megawatts or more, unless that customer was already using more than 50 megawatts as of January 1, 2000.
This carve-out appears to apply to only one entity in the state of Idaho — Micron.
The bill says, “A public utility shall not provide electric service to a new large load or acquire resources to serve a new large load unless the commission approves an electric service agreement for the new large load that has no rate increase, is just and reasonable pursuant to sections 61-301 and 61-502, Idaho Code, and complies with this section.”
Before approving a new “large load,” the electric utility would be required to calculate, among other things, “all new and existing resources required to serve the new large load; reliability impacts; financial and operating risk, including impacts to credit ratings, cost of equity, cost of capital, and exposure to fuel and market price risk; and opportunity costs incurred to serve the new large load.”
The applicant would be required to pay for all of the analysis and to “provide all data the commission determines necessary” to compile it. The applicant would have to pay — through rates, incremental cost-recovery riders, minimum monthly bills, contract-capacity charges, or other commission-approved mechanisms — for any current, future, or anticipated costs required to “ensure no rate increase” to other customers of the utility.
Additionally, the applicant would have to agree to “a commission-approved exit fee structure to ensure that an exit does not result in a rate increase to existing consumers.”
The applicant would be required to “furnish financial security, in a form and amount approved by the commission, to ensure recovery of costs incurred by the public utility in reliance on the new large load’s contracted power requirement.”
It is fairly typical for new developments and facilities to be expected to pay for infrastructure upgrades required for their construction (e.g. roads, water, and sewer lines) as part of the approval process. Such requirements are usually part of the overall review of an application; however, they are not a statutory imposition based on a facility’s size or level of consumption.
A facility that needs 19 megawatts of power is not substantially different from one that needs 20, but this bill would create a far more burdensome standard based on an arbitrary threshold that has no direct nexus to the facility’s anticipated impact on electrical infrastructure.
It’s worth noting that a related bill from 2025 originally defined a large load as 10 megawatts and then was amended to say 30 megawatts, meaning in less than a year’s time, the state has contemplated adopting a threshold that has varied by a factor of three, with no clear, evidence-based justification for why one number is definitively better than another in terms of grid impact proportionality.
Protecting existing ratepayers from substantial price hikes caused by an increase in electrical demand is fair, but it is equally necessary regardless of if that increase comes from one large facility or several smaller ones.
This bill could well end up deterring the construction of large facilities (such as mills, plants, or data centers) rather than simply requiring them to pay for reasonable and necessary infrastructure upgrades.
(-1)
