S. 5028 · Where this bill is now
In committee
Introduced in the Senate, Jul 16, 2026
What this bill does
In plain words · AI-written from the official summaryData centers pay for power upgrades
This bill asks states to adopt a rule making large energy-hungry customers—primarily data centers that use 100 megawatts of power or more—pay the full cost of any upgrades to power plants, transmission lines, or distribution systems needed to serve them. The utility would require these customers to put down money or provide financial security before any upgrades are made, and they'd still owe the costs even if they stop using the service later.
How it affects you
Data center companies and other massive industrial operations that use huge amounts of electricity would face higher costs for expanding power infrastructure to meet their needs. Regular electricity customers could potentially benefit if these costs aren't spread across all ratepayers, though the summary doesn't spell out specific impacts on individual consumers' bills.
Read the official summary (Introduced in Senate, Jul 16, 2026)
Ratepayer Protection Act
The bill requires state utility regulators and nonregulated utilities to consider implementing a standard to hold certain large-load customers responsible for the costs associated with any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade of electric service necessary to serve such customers. A large-load customer means a non-residential electric consumer that enters, or requests to enter, an agreement concerning the sale of electric energy primarily to operate information technology infrastructure and related systems pertaining to data storage and computational applications and services (e.g., data centers) that have a peak electric demand of 100 megawatts or more at a single site or campus.
Specifically, the bill requires states to consider implementing a federal standard for large-load customers. The standard must require rates charged by electric utilities for providing electric service to a large-load customer to be designed to recover from the large-load customer the full, incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve such customer. This rate must include the costs that would be incurred if the large-load customer terminates an agreement with the electric utility pertaining to the sale of electric energy or otherwise ceases the purchase of energy from the electric utility.
Under the standard, an electric utility must require the large-load customer to provide to the utility financial assurances or contributions to cover the cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade that is necessary to serve the load of a large-load customer before the utility makes any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade.
Written by AI (Claude) using only the official summary by the Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress’s nonpartisan research staff. It can miss nuance, so check the official summary and the bill text for details.
2nd SessionS. 5028
A BILL
Ratepayer Protection Act
Sponsor: Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) · Introduced Jul 16, 2026 · Energy · 1 version of the text
Sources: Congress.gov actions and votes · bill text from GovInfo · latest official action Jul 16, 2026: “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.”