Provides relative to increases for certain utility rates

HB 922 creates new statutory provisions in the Louisiana Revised Statutes by adding Part IX to Chapter 9 of Title 45, comprised of sections 1350.1 through 1350.3, establishing a framework that prohibits electric public utilities from recovering costs associated with new electric demand for data centers from residential household customers. The bill defines key terms including data center, which encompasses facilities used for digital data storage, processing, or distribution with new or expanded electric demand of fifty megawatts or more, and new electric demand for data centers, which includes all incremental costs associated with serving or interconnecting such facilities. The core mechanism requires the Public Service Commission to ensure that all costs attributable to new data center electric demand are allocated exclusively to the data center customer through special contracts, tariffs, or rate classes that provide no cost recovery from household customers, and the commission must deny any rate adjustment, tariff change, or certificate of public convenience and necessity that would shift such costs to residential ratepayers.

The practical effect of this legislation directly impacts residential electric customers, who receive explicit statutory protection against rate increases stemming from data center development, and commercial data center operators, who will bear the full cost burden of their electric infrastructure through separate billing mechanisms and long-term contracts with minimum fifteen-year terms. Electric public utilities operating in Louisiana will be required to implement complex cost allocation systems and undergo independent prudence reviews of investments serving data centers, fundamentally altering how utility companies structure their service agreements and rate designs. The Public Service Commission acquires substantial new regulatory duties, including promulgating comprehensive rules establishing separate rate classes, prohibiting cross-subsidization, requiring long-term contracts that include provisions for cost overruns and decommissioning, and conducting independent prudence reviews of utility capital investments related to data center service.

This legislation operates within the existing regulatory framework of the Public Service Commission, which has long-standing authority over electric utilities under Title 45 of the Louisiana Revised Statutes. The bill explicitly recognizes the commission's existing jurisdiction by making utilities subject to commission jurisdiction the entities covered by the prohibition, and it anticipates interaction with the commission's existing rulemaking authority and its authority to approve tariff changes and certificates of public convenience and necessity. The statutory structure reflects constitutional principles of due process by requiring commission rulemaking rather than imposing absolute mandates, while simultaneously constraining the commission's discretion by requiring denial of any rate adjustments that would burden household customers with data center costs, thereby establishing a clear prohibition rather than discretionary authority.