Full Title: West Virginia Ratepayers Footing the Bill for Infrastructure Build Out
Author(s): Cathy Kunkel
Publisher(s): Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis
Publication Date: May 29, 2025
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Description (excerpt):
The electric utility industry is forecasting rapid electricity demand growth from data centers, marking a sharp contrast with the past couple of decades of essentially flat electricity demand in the United States. Utilities and regulators are scrambling to address this new demand from data centers, which often require significantly larger amounts of power than typical industrial loads.
One of the new challenges posed by the rapid growth in data centers is the question of cross-subsidization, i.e., whether other ratepayers are or will be unfairly paying for electrical infrastructure needed only for data centers. This briefing note looks at this question with respect to the buildout of electric transmission within the mid-Atlantic region, considering two high-voltage transmission lines proposed through West Virginia as a case study.