If the details in this article are correct, it’s because they need $7 billion dollars worth of power infrastructure built out for their 1GW datacenter, not an arbitrary punitive penalty.
You seem convinced it has to be demagogy but that’s a significant amount of concentrated risk for the utility on a single project that could evaporate and leave them holding the bag, forcing rate increases for existing ratepayers.
Local utility We Energies’ “very large customer” tariff requires any data centre developer with an S&P rating below single A minus to post collateral in the form of cash or a letter of credit. The size of the collateral is determined by the value of any power plants and transmission lines built to service the data centre.
You seem convinced it has to be demagogy but that’s a significant amount of concentrated risk for the utility on a single project that could evaporate and leave them holding the bag, forcing rate increases for existing ratepayers.
https://archive.md/voqjr