The New England utility betting against data centers. (Heatmap AM)
Data centers may represent big new buyers for electrical utilities. But Eversource Energy, the Massachusetts-based electrical power company serving nearly 5 million customers across New England, is betting against data centers. On a call with investors last week, Eversource CEO Joe Nolan said he’s “not interested” in developing new server farms across the company’s territory, as it’s “only going to drive up the price of energy,” according to Utility Dive. “It’s of no value to our residential customer — actually, any customer,” Nolan said. A limited buildout of artificial intelligence infrastructure had kept prices steadier in New England’s grid than in PJM Interconnection, the mid-Atlantic system. “If you look at the volatility in ISO New England, there’s not a very volatile market compared to PJM,” he said. “So, I feel good about it.”
That position may align well with the push from some Democrats, particularly on the left, to halt data center construction amid a populist backlash to the projects. But this isn’t a blue state issue alone. The same day Nolan made the remarks, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a hard-line Republican, signed a bill mandating that utilities require large data centers to pay their own service costs and prevent those costs from being shifted to ratepayers. “You should not pay one more red cent for electricity because of a hyperscale data center as an individual,” DeSantis said, according to E&E News. “That’s just not right, for the most wealthy companies in the history of the world to come in and have individual Floridians or Americans subsidize these hyperscale data centers.”
