MIAMI VALLEY — President Donald Trump took action with tech company leaders to make sure Americans aren’t paying higher electric bills when data centers move into their communities.
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Haley Fogt and her husband live just outside of Sidney.
Their backyard is on the banks of the Great Miami River.
“Yeah, that’s why we moved here,” Haley said.
She has more than one concern about the proposed Amazon data center in Sidney.
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“My biggest concern is the river, since I live on the river and what the wastewater will do to the river, but the electricity and then the water bills, like, it’s just crazy,” Haley said.
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On Wednesday, President Donald Trump talked about one of those concerns.
“Well, thank you very much, these are exciting times,” Trump said.
Representatives from tech companies joined him to sign what the president is calling his “Ratepayer Protection Pledge.”
“Big tech companies are committing to fully cover the cost of increased electricity production required for AI data centers, and that would be prices for American communities will not go up, but in many cases will actually come down,” Trump said.
The move follows up on the plan the I-Team previously reported on when the president mentioned the plan in his State of the Union speech last week.
“This means that the tech companies and the data centers will be able to get the electricity they need all without driving up electricity costs for consumers. This is a historic win for countless American families,” Trump said.
The I-Team knows this is an issue that’s been on the White House’s radar.
>>PREVIOUS COVERAGE:White House, governors including DeWine, share electricity pricing concerns amid data center growth
In January, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine told the I-Team he was part of a group of 14 bipartisan governors in the region who traveled to DC to meet with the White House Energy Council.
“Data centers, we think, are valuable,” DeWine said.
The group has expressed concern about how PJM Interconnection prices electricity.
PJM operates the electric grid in the part of the country that includes Ohio.
“But they need to pay their own way,” DeWine said.
As the I-Team has previously reported, Ohio is the 5th in the country for the number of data centers.
>>RELATED: I-TEAM: Data centers continue to move into region; President speaks on electricity pricing concerns
Amazon is behind two of the several proposed data centers in the region.
In a statement on Wednesday, Amazon Web Services said in part:
“Amazon is signing the Ratepayer Protection Pledge to reinforce our commitment to paying our full energy costs and ensuring our data centers do not increase electricity bills for consumers. We welcome the Administration’s leadership on this issue and support the pledge’s commitments, which establish a clear baseline to protect ratepayers while enabling responsible, long-term energy partnerships that strengthen the grid and the communities where data centers operate.”
“I feel like the data center should foot that bill rather than us residents. That’s my big concern,” Haley said. “That would be nice if it happened, but it needs to happen sooner rather than later. You know, our costs are already increasing a lot.”
I-Team Lead Investigator John Bedell also talked to PJM about the ratepayer protection:
“It is clear that electricity demand is increasing driven largely by the proliferation of data centers in our footprint. This is resulting in higher bills for all electricity consumers. PJM’s primary responsibility is to maintain power grid reliability for the 67 million consumers that it serves. As a mission-driven organization that focuses on people, the affordability challenge created by this supply/demand imbalance is concerning to PJM.
PJM has taken action recently to both try and maintain grid reliability while dealing with these affordability concerns. These actions include placing a cap on the existing market price to prevent an increase in wholesale (capacity) prices for the typical consumer through mid-2030. Also, PJM is exploring a plan to procure new supply to cure this supply/demand imbalance, and will look to charge the costs of this procurement to the data centers. This plan is fully in-line with the President’s comments.”
News Center 7 will continue to follow this story.
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