The Ratepayer Protection Pledge is a Press Release Dressed Up as Policy

On March 4, Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI gathered at the White House and signed a voluntary commitment to cover their own infrastructure costs — ensuring grid upgrade expenses would not be passed to residential customers. No oversight mechanism. No enforcement. The actual work falls where it always has — on state PUCs.

Texas moved first. The PUCT voted on March 12 to publish a draft rule under SB 6 establishing interconnection standards for data centers and large loads of 75 MW or more. The rule requires early-stage financial commitments including a $50,000 per megawatt non-refundable fee, proof of site control through a deed or signed lease before ERCOT will begin an interconnection study, and detailed disclosure of parallel or similar interconnection requests by the same company or its affiliates. Public comments are due April 17. Developers are already warning that the mandatory site control disclosure requirements may compromise eligibility for economic development incentives — which typically require a company to not be “committed” to a location before an incentive is granted. The pledge made headlines. The Texas rules will make law.

The Maryland Utility RELIEF Act cleared both chambers this week and is headed to Gov. Wes Moore’s desk for signature, with the General Assembly’s session closing Monday at midnight. House and Senate leaders reached a deal on April 9 after weeks of divergence between the two chambers. The bill delivers $150 in annual ratepayer rebates, caps ratepayer-funded executive compensation at $250,000, eliminates certain utility return adders, and closes loopholes that allow some underground transmission projects to bypass state review.

At the same time, Pepco has filed for a distribution rate increase that would add $11–12 per month to the average Maryland customer’s bill, citing substation upgrades, storm resilience investments, and grid reliability improvements. Virtual public hearings are scheduled for April 14 and April 17. A final PSC decision is expected in August.

The two tracks are running simultaneously — one piece of legislation trying to lower what ratepayers pay, one rate case proposing to increase it. The Maryland PSC will decide the Pepco case independent of the legislature, but the political environment the RELIEF Act creates will shape how commissioners approach that decision. GR professionals with Maryland utility exposure should be tracking both proceedings together, not in isolation.

Environmental groups filed a petition for judicial review in Fulton County Superior Court on March 25, asking a judge to overturn the PSC’s December 2025 approval of Georgia Power’s $16 billion expansion plan. The 42-page petition argues the commission ignored the statutory requirement to find a “need” for the resources at the time they begin operating, failed to adopt an official demand forecast, and approved several resources without the mandatory competitive bidding process. The petition also notes that the commission approved 757 megawatts of capacity that even Georgia Power’s own modeling showed was not needed for the 2031 timeframe.

The administrative path was already exhausted. The PSC denied reconsideration in February in a 3-2 vote — Democrats Hubbard and Johnson dissenting, Republicans Shaw, Pridemore, and McDonald voting against. With no further avenue inside the commission, advocates escalated to the courts. Georgia Power called the suit “a simple attempt to create economic and regulatory chaos.” The PSC declined to comment on pending litigation.

The deeper context: Georgia Power claims more than 80 percent of its newly projected large load growth is coming from data centers that have not yet signed contracts. If those contracts don’t materialize, the $50–60 billion in projected costs over the life of the expansion lands on residential ratepayers. That risk is at the center of the lawsuit, the 3-2 vote, and the November 2026 elections in which Peter Hubbard’s seat returns to the ballot. This is the state to watch in 2026.