ST. GEORGE, Utah — An electricity provider in Southern Utah has plans to pre-emptively hike rates for future power-hungry Artificial Intelligence and other information technology businesses.
When people hear the words rate hike and their power bill, they get a little nervous.
An electricity provider in Southern Utah is taking rate hikes a little differently. They're doing a preemptive strike against AI and other information technology high-power users.
Washington City resident Jacob Larson lives off his electricity but says the price is right on his power bill.
“Because I'm on Dixie Power, it's ridiculously low,” Larsen said. “I mean, I think we have a 2400 square foot home and we have two EVs Everything is electric, and I think the most we ever get is $170 in the summer.”
Yet, Larsen wasn’t alarmed when he got an email from Dixie Power that they were planning a rate hike.
Dixie Power President and CEO LaDel Laub told FOX 13 that the rate hike is for customers Dixie Power doesn’t have yet but are getting requests for - high-density industrial users. These aren’t the traditional industrial factories of yesteryear, think internet server centers and other high-tech facilities that eat up a lot of electricity.
“We are trying to be proactive,” Laub said. “The challenge with large industrial high-density loads is they are so big in comparison to our normal or our total size that we need to just ensure they don't disrupt the entire network. And we are not changing the rates to the small commercial, the residential customers.”
According to the Electric Power Research Institute, computer servers for AI and bitcoin mining as well as the rest of the internet could use up 9% of the nation’s power supply by the end of the decade. And they said a typical large data center has the same power requirements as 750000 homes.
“It is absolutely about what's coming next and we're just trying to be prepared for the future,” Laub said.
Dixie Power’s footprint constitutes southern St. George and Washington City, the western edge of Iron County and the I-15 corridor in Arizona.
It’s also unique in its ownership. Sitting in on a board meeting, you won’t find suits. Just windbreakers and polo shirts.
“We are consumer-owned. We're a co-op. which really means the users of the electricity are the owners. So if we do make profits, Ultimately, those profits go back to the consumers,” Laub said.
Laub says Dixie Power has additional things in the works, like more power generation.
All designed, he says, to protect Dixie Power's customers in the future.
