Ohio PUCO data center energy service tariff, 85% minimum take (2025)

Ohio — PUCO Approves a Data Center Energy Service Tariff Requiring New Data Center Customers to Pay for a MINIMUM OF 85% OF THEIR SUBSCRIBED ELECTRICITY USAGE REGARDLESS OF ACTUAL CONSUMPTION, for Up to 12 Years, Shifting the Risk of Overstated Demand Off Other Ratepayers (July 2025)
Ohio · Ohio — PUCO-approved AEP Ohio data center energy service tariff (July 2025), O.R.C. § 4909.18; 85% minimum subscribed-usage payment, 25 MW threshold, up to 12 years

Status
In effect
Took effect
July 23, 2025
Applies to
New data center customers taking service under the tariff, who must pay for at least 85% of subscribed usage regardless of actual consumption for up to 12 years
Enforced by
Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO)

In July 2025 the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio approved what a legal survey describes as 'a landmark tariff structure' for data center electricity service. Its core requirement is a MINIMUM TAKE: new data center customers must PAY FOR AT LEAST 85% OF THEIR SUBSCRIBED ELECTRICITY USAGE, REGARDLESS OF ACTUAL CONSUMPTION, for UP TO 12 YEARS. Understanding why that is a consumer protection requires seeing the problem it solves. When a data center asks a utility for hundreds of megawatts, the utility must plan, and often build, generation and transmission to serve it. Those costs are recovered from the whole ratepayer base over decades. If the data center then uses far less than it subscribed for — because the project shrank, the AI buildout slowed, or it was only ever speculative interest at several sites at once — the infrastructure still exists and everyone else pays for it. A minimum-take provision moves that risk onto the party that caused it. Subscribe for 500 megawatts and you pay for at least 425, whether you use it or not. It also does something subtler and arguably more valuable: it disciplines the forecast. A developer shopping the same nominal load around five utilities has every reason to overstate demand when subscription is free and no reason to do so when 85% of it is a binding financial commitment. Much of the grid-planning anxiety recorded throughout this dataset — PJM's 2030 reliability warnings, the substation-capacity constraints Eureka's planners described, the ratepayer bills in Tennessee, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Arizona — rests on load forecasts that may be inflated by exactly this dynamic. Ohio's tariff is the mechanism most directly aimed at it, and it operates through utility regulation rather than zoning, which means it reaches every data center in the service territory without any municipality having to act.

Who is protected: Ohio electricity ratepayers outside the data center class, who would otherwise bear the cost of generation and transmission built for load that does not materialise

Legal detail

OHIO — DATA CENTER ENERGY SERVICE TARIFF approved by the PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF OHIO (PUCO) in JULY 2025, characterised in the located source as 'a landmark tariff structure' and associated with O.R.C. § 4909.18 (the statutory provision governing rate applications). OPERATIVE TERM: new data center customers must 'PAY FOR A MINIMUM OF 85% OF THEIR SUBSCRIBED ELECTRICITY USAGE, REGARDLESS OF ACTUAL CONSUMPTION,' and the tariff applies 'FOR UP TO 12 YEARS.' THIS IS A MINIMUM-TAKE (TAKE-OR-PAY) OBLIGATION AND IT IS A RATEPAYER PROTECTION OF A DIFFERENT KIND FROM EVERYTHING ELSE INDEXED HERE. THE PROBLEM IT ADDRESSES: a large-load interconnection request obliges the utility to plan and frequently to build generation, transmission and distribution, the cost of which is recovered across the rate base over decades. IF SUBSCRIBED LOAD DOES NOT MATERIALISE, THE INFRASTRUCTURE AND ITS COST REMAIN AND ARE SOCIALISED. A minimum-take term assigns the stranded-cost risk to the subscribing customer. SECOND-ORDER EFFECT, WHICH IS ARGUABLY THE MORE IMPORTANT ONE: minimum-take pricing DISCIPLINES THE LOAD FORECAST ITSELF. Speculative or duplicative interconnection requests — the same nominal load queued at several utilities simultaneously — are costless where subscription carries no financial commitment and expensive where 85% of it is binding. THE LOAD-GROWTH PROJECTIONS THAT DRIVE MUCH OF THE POLICY RECORDED IN THIS DATASET DEPEND ON THE INTEGRITY OF THOSE FORECASTS (cf. the deferred PJM 2030 reliability analysis; the Eureka planning record on PG&E substation capacity at Eureka CA data center moratorium and 20,000 sq ft cap direction (2026); the Steuben County transmission-routing trigger at Steuben County IN six-month data center moratorium (2026)). RELATIONSHIP TO THE LEGISLATIVE RATEPAYER COHORT: TN HB 1847 data center ratepayer protection (2026), Oklahoma HB 2992 data center ratepayer protection (2026), S731/A796 — Data center ratepayer protection and grid-demand (reported to require ≥85% payment for a minimum of 10 years — CLOSELY PARALLEL TO THIS TARIFF), AZ HB 2756 Utilities/High Load Factor, and federally H.R. 9340 Ratepayer Protection Act (House-passed 417-3; blocked in Senate), which would merely require states to CONSIDER such cost allocation and which died in the Senate. OHIO DID BY TARIFF WHAT CONGRESS COULD NOT DO BY STATUTE, and it did so a year earlier. Regulatory analogues already indexed: Large Load Tariff Docket Opened via Duke Energy Progress/Carolinas… and Model Tariff Framework for Large Load Customers (Docket M-2025-3054271). INSTRUMENT ADVANTAGE: a commission-approved tariff reaches every qualifying customer in the service territory without municipal action, and is not exposed to the vested-rights and litigation-capacity problems that defeated local moratoria (Inver Grove Heights MN data center moratorium amended under lawsuit (2026)). CRITICAL UNKNOWNS, ALL FLAGGED: WHICH UTILITY the tariff applies to IS NOT IDENTIFIED in the source; NO MEGAWATT THRESHOLD defining a covered 'data center customer' is given; NO EXIT FEE, EARLY-TERMINATION RIGHT, COLLATERAL OR CREDITWORTHINESS REQUIREMENT is described; and the PUCO case number and exact decision date were not obtained.

Key facts

JurisdictionOhio
LevelState
StrengthStronger
EnactedJuly 9, 2025
CitationOhio — PUCO-approved AEP Ohio data center energy service tariff (July 2025), O.R.C. § 4909.18; 85% minimum subscribed-usage payment, 25 MW threshold, up to 12 years
Private right of actionNo, agency enforcement only
PenaltiesContractual — the minimum-take obligation is enforced through the tariff and the service agreement; no separate penalty is described in the located source
Topicsdata-center siting and energy · consumer protection · government use of AI
Legal analysisFrom Incentives to Moratoriums: How Several Key States Are Responding to Data Centers — JD Supra (law firm survey)

More AI rules in Ohio

Related data-center siting and energy rules elsewhere

See something wrong or out of date? Submit a correction. Every entry must carry a verifiable source.