Tallahassee, FL — The Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) requested the consumer group opposing Duke Energy’s data center plan redact the utility’s internal projections for data centers transmission and generation costs from their brief released this evening.

This comes amidst skyrocketing electricity bills. Recent Food & Water Watch analysis finds that between January 2021 and January 2026, Duke Energy customer bills jumped 45 percent — over twice the rate of inflation — amounting to over $688 more annually. If approved, Duke’s data center rate structure proposal is expected to drive residential and small business electricity bills even higher.

In response, Brooke Ward, Florida State Director with Food & Water Watch said:

“The PSC’s omission of Duke’s projected data center costs is absurd. The entire point of these hearings is to determine whether Floridians will have to pay for data centers’ electricity needs because the law is clear: data center costs cannot be passed on to Florida families. But here’s the PSC siding with Duke to remove the most relevant information for whether ratepayers will shoulder the financial burden of this buildout.

“The PSC sends a strong message that Duke’s interests are more important than those of Florida ratepayers. If they want to maintain fairness, the PSC must make those numbers public. If Duke exploits a loophole to pass data center costs onto residents, make no mistake — DeSantis’ PSC will be to blame. Greenlighting this proposal would be salt in the wound for Floridians already struggling with astronomical electricity bills and a betrayal of the public.”

The PSC is expected to issue a final decision in November.

Background

Governor Ron DeSantis signed SB484 into law in May. The legislation was purportedly meant to protect ratepayers from shouldering the cost and financial risk associated with data center development. The law explicitly states that ratepayers will not be responsible for incremental transmission and generation costs from data centers, and requires utilities to create a new large load tariff rate class for data centers. Duke’s proposed large load tariff structure, which would place data centers in a tariff class subsidized by residential and small business ratepayers, is the first challenge to the law and a bellwether for how aggressively the state’s utility regulators will implement it. All utilities are required to submit rate structure plans to regulators by October 2026.

Affordable energy and consumer advocates argue that Duke’s proposal will hurt residential and small business ratepayers, as Floridians pay some of the highest electricity bills in the nation.  Meanwhile, electric utilities stand to profit from data center development. The Office of Public Counsel, which represents consumers in utility cases, has opposed Duke’s proposal and called for the case to be dismissed.

At a hearing last month, Duke revealed that it has been approached by data center companies about powering warehouses up to 1,400 megawatts, reported to be among the biggest in the world.