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The Hoosier Energy executive staff panel of, from left, Chris Blunk, Rob Horton, Jon Jackson and Scott Bowers take the stage at the 2026 Annual Meeting.<\/p><\/div>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIt\u2019s not just the volume of interest, but I think what’s really important is the size and requirements of those types of projects,\u201d Horton said. \u201cAt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI 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,\u201d Horton said. \u201cSo we’ll need to continue to be flexible and nimble as we are as cooperatives in relation to serving these types of loads.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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\u2019s 17 member cooperatives.<\/p>\n
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\u201cOur 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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The result of the policy is that a data center would pay all costs to serve its load rather than operating under Hoosier Energy\u2019s traditional tariffs. The costs are not socialized with other member consumers.<\/p>\n
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Those costs include any studies done to serve the load, transmission infrastructure to serve the load, transmission costs, capacity costs and administrative fees.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThese 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,\u201d Jackson said. \u201cIt 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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These large loads are also invoiced every seven days on their energy consumption as part of minimizing the risk, coupled with robust prepayments.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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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.<\/p>\n
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Walker summed it up best.<\/p>\n
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\u201cWe 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,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"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. "},"author":7,"featured_media":25476,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spotlight-stories","category-18","description-off"],"acf":false,"yoast_head":"\r\n