HARRISBURG, Pa. (KYW Newsradio) — Skyrocketing energy prices were the topic of a four-hour hearing in Harrisburg, with lawmakers hearing from a panel including grid managers, consumer advocates, and company executives.
The spike in electricity rates comes down to basic supply and demand, according to Evan Vaughn, executive director of MAREC Action, formerly the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Coalition.
“There was a retirement of old power plants outstripping new power plants coming online,” he told lawmakers.
“When that supply and demand balance is thrown off kilter and demand is increasing while supply is not dramatically increasing or keeping up incrementally, that is ultimately the outcome,” said Asim Haque, senior vice president of governmental and member services for PJM Interconnection, the grid manager for the northeastern United States.
“However, that data center demand, along with other economic growth, has certainly exacerbated those issues,” added Vaughn.
Data centers require massive amounts of electricity. Even in the planning phases, necessary infrastructure improvement costs are getting passed on to consumers, according to Pennsylvania consumer advocate Darryl Lawrence.
“I strongly recommend that this body vote in favor of legislation to ensure that any new data centers in Pennsylvania must pay for any and all costs that they are causing that would not have been needed but for the presence of a data center,” he urged lawmakers.
But Pennsylvania Consumer Advocate Darryl Lawrence said plans for power-hungry data centers have added to the imbalance, leading to expensive infrastructure projects, “where the costs of those projects are proposed to be largely allocated to existing consumers.”
Other panelists noted that while a data center can be built in a year, it takes about five to six years to get a new power plant up and running.
Vaughn suggested wind and solar as the quickest options to feed the power grid, but Republican lawmakers said government policy pushing renewables caused the supply shortage.