Two groups are challenging Entergy’s plan to power a massive artificial intelligence data center in northeast Louisiana.
The Alliance for Affordable Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists are asking the Public Service Commission to deny Entergy’s request to build three gas power plants for the facility, saying they sidestepped PSC policy by failing to show the commission that the plants are the most cost-effective option.
“The purpose of which is to require utilities to look at the market and see what the best cost resource is to serve all of their customers,” says Logan Burke, Alliance for Affordable Energy executive director. “We’re asking the commission to actually require Entergy to follow the commission’s own policy in order to ensure that ratepayers don’t get stuck with higher costs than necessarily are needed.”
Burke says since Entergy did not sufficiently show that the plants are the most cost-effective option; ratepayers could get stuck with the bill in the long run.
“Even if Meta is going to pay for these three facilities for 15 years, after that we are all on the hook for it if you pay an Entergy Louisiana bill,” says Burke.
Burke says powering a massive AI data center is not cheap.
“It costs over $3 billion, according to Entergy right now,” Burke says. “But we have got to take it on faith at this point that that’s how much it costs, because Entergy didn’t go to the market and say, ‘How much should this cost?'”
Entergy and Meta have not commented on the groups’ challenge.
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