Bill Description: Senate Bill 1368 would impose new regulations on utility companies and new electricity customers with power requirements of 30 megawatts or more.
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NOTE: Senate Bill 1368 is related to House Bill 756 (2026).
Does it give government any new, additional, or expanded power to prohibit, restrict, or regulate activities in the free market? Conversely, does it eliminate or reduce government intervention in the market?
House Bill 756 would create Section 61-335, Idaho Code, to address situations where a new electricity customer (or an existing customer entering into a new contract) has power requirements of 30 megawatts or more in any consecutive 36-month period.
Under this bill, a public utility would “only provide service to a new large load pursuant to a commission-approved service contract.” In other words, an investor-owned utility would be prevented from taking on a large customer without explicit approval from government.
In order to serve a new large customer, the utility would have to “file the service contract with the commission for approval prior to providing service” and include “supporting information sufficient to demonstrate compliance with the requirements of this section.” The commission would have six months to “review and approve or deny” the contract.
In order to receive the commission’s approval a utility would have to demonstrate that it expects to “maintain the same or higher level of service quality and reliability available to the public utility’s other customers as would have been reasonably expected to exist had the public utility not served the new large load.” It would also have to show that the new customer will fund “its share of generation, transmission, substation, and distribution infrastructure investments that would not be placed in service or required by the public utility but for the new large load.”
The bill says, “such investments may be directly assigned or allocated in part as may be determined by the commission pursuant to this section.”
The utility would also have to demonstrate that its other customers are protected against default by the new large load customer. In practice, this would likely require a substantial bond or other form of financial security from the customer.
Under this bill, the commission shall “issue orders setting forth guidance or other requirements necessary to implement the provisions of this section”; “provide reasonable assurance that new large loads will not cause the rates charged to the public utility’s other customers to increase”; and “have the jurisdiction to resolve all disputes arising under this section.”
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 29 megawatts of power is not substantially different from one that needs 30, 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 House Bill 756 (2026) sets the threshold at 20 megawatts, while a related bill from 2025 originally defined a large load as 10 megawatts and was then amended to say 30 megawatts. While a 30-megawatt threshold would likely impact fewer potential customers, this wide range of proposed thresholds underscores the lack of any clear, evidence-based justification for why one number is definitively better than another in terms of grid impact proportionality.
Public utilities often exercise legal monopolies in a given area, which means there is no market competition to push prices down. Such utilities are regulated, with one of the goals being to protect customers (especially existing customers) from substantial price hikes caused by a sudden increase in demand.
While such a demand increase could be caused by the addition of a single large load as addressed by this bill, it could also come from two or more smaller facilities, a new industrial park, or even several new large subdivisions.
Because the bill only addresses the impact on ratepayers from a new large load, the bill could end up deterring the construction of large facilities (such as mills, plants, or data centers) rather than creating a broader standard that requires developers to cover proportionate costs for reasonable and necessary utility infrastructure upgrades.
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