Centres de données et accessibilité financière au cœur des discussions lors de la réunion annuelle

The 2026 Hoosier Energy Annual Meeting convened on April 8 with the theme of Bold Moves, Cooperative Priorities.

 

It might also have been subtitled: Data Centers and Affordability.

 

That trend started right out of the gate with comments from Hoosier Energy President & CEO Donna Walker, who noted that while these are hot topics now, they are not entirely new.

 

“Three years ago, we recognized that potential data center growth would require significantly different service approaches than traditional economic development,” Walker said. “Now, deciding whether or not a data center is a good fit is absolutely a community decision. What we wanted to do was to work with members to ensure that we were in the position – if a community served by one of the member systems decided that a data center was a good fit – to fulfill our joint obligation to serve that load.

 

“So together, the board, staff, and member CEOs, developed a framework and policy for serving large megaloads, like data centers. to ensure that they pay for all resources and infrastructure necessary to serve them, and that no cost or risk will be transitioned or transferred over to today’s member consumers.”

 

The member consumers featured prominently throughout the day’s discussions. As Walker also pointed out, the end users are acutey focused on affordability.

 

“We know that many in our communities are struggling financially these days,” she said. “It’s a difficult time out there with surging gas prices at the pump on top of already higher food and housing costs. And we also understand that nobody wants to see their electricity bill increase during this time.”

 

Following Walker, a presentation by Jim McMahon of Charles River Associates featured statistics, graphs and headlines that underscored industry trends while making the case that data centers and affordability were not necessarily directly connected.

 

That thought was echoed by a panel discussion entitled Navigating Federal & State Energy Dynamics with NRECA’s Hill Thomas providing a national perspective, Indiana Electric Cooperatives CEO John Cassady providing the Indiana perspective and Association of Illinois Electric Cooperatives CEO Craig Sondgeroth taking up the Illinois point of view. Thomas, in particular, noted that, statistics notwithstanding, most politicians saw data centers and affordability as related, not separate, issues.

 

However, it was the Hoosier Energy Executive Staff panel made up of Chief Administrative Officer Chris Blunk, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Rob Horton, Chief Financial Officer Jon Jackson and Senior Vice President Member & Government Relations Scott Bowers that truly highlighted the issue. And did so largely by asking itself the question: What does the growing shift to data centers and large industrial loads mean to the Hoosier Energy system and its members?

 

Part of that answer came from historical context. Prior to 2020, inquires in the economic development space for 100 megawatts were few and far between. However, in the past five years those kind of inquiries have skyrocketed, aided in part by tax incentives the state of Indiana put in place to encourage data center development.

 

“It’s not just the volume of interest, but I think what’s really important is the size and requirements of those types of projects,” Horton said. “At that time, most data centers were 50 to 100 megawatts. Now we are looking at exponentially 10- to 20-times multipliers in relationship to the size of projects that are being brought to our member systems.”

 

The types of organizations interested in these types of projects vary, making education and engagement key pieces for parties both outside of Hoosier Energy as well as within. And the process remains ongoing.

 

“I think that the board has been extremely engaged, many member CEOs have been extremely engaged in helping (organizations) work with us along this path, and I don’t anticipate that the evolution has stopped,” Horton said. “So we’ll need to continue to be flexible and nimble as we are as cooperatives in relation to serving these types of loads.”

 

The financial component is also key to the education and negotiation of these data centers and megaloads, impacting affordability for not only the member-consumers, but Hoosier Energy’s 17 member cooperatives.

 

“Our policy is really striking a balance between that obligation to serve and the obligation not to share costs to our 17 members, and not to take on any extraordinary risk with regard to these large loads, these data center loads.”

 

Developing a policy was focused on not shifting costs onto members and not introducing new risks to Hoosier Energy and its members while still meeting the obligation to serve. The result was what is called the Consumer Directed Resource Policy, which applies to all loads greater than 50 megawatts.

 

The result of the policy is that a data center would pay all costs to serve its load rather than operating under Hoosier Energy’s traditional tariffs. The costs are not socialized with other member consumers.

 

Those costs include any studies done to serve the load, transmission infrastructure to serve the load, transmission costs, capacity costs and administrative fees.

 

“These loads introduce significant risk, and our approach to managing this risk is very disciplined in terms of we do not procure any capacity on behalf of the actual data center,” Jackson said. “It would require them to actually procure the capacity to serve their loan, and we require them to actually pay for any obligations that we’ve undertaken on their behalf. We require them to pay for that upfront. That’s a very important component of our policy.”

 

These large loads are also invoiced every seven days on their energy consumption as part of minimizing the risk, coupled with robust prepayments.

 

From an economic standpoint, the policy and contract enforced puts Hoosier Energy in a position where all 17 members would share in lower transmission costs if Hoosier were to wind up serving a data center.

 

“I think the key takeaways here would be that we have a path to say yes, to serve these loads, but not at the result of cost shifting or taking on any new risk to our 17 member systems.”

 

Couple that with the impending restart of the Palisades Nuclear Plant, a subject addressed in the final session of the annual meeting, and Hoosier Energy is not only positioned to handle whatever lies ahead with data centers but to also maintain affordability and reliability for its members and member-consumers.

 

Walker summed it up best.

 

“We literally consider the decisions we’re making in the context of trying to provide a better future for the communities we serve for generations to come,” she said. “And we also don’t make those decisions from some far away corporate headquarters where we never encounter the people that are impacted by the choices we make. We know that we literally live and work with those people in the community every day.”