EdgeCore Says Data Centers Should Pay Their Own Power Costs. 6 Min Read. Picture of Mesa Campus via EdgeCore.
EdgeCore Digital Infrastructure says it will fund the generation, transmission, and delivery infrastructure its expanding data center campuses need. At the gigawatt scale, that exposure can reach hundreds of millions of dollars, but the harder question is where utilities and regulators draw the line between specific data center costs and broader grid upgrades..
That matters as EdgeCore expands its development pipeline, which includes a more than 1.1 GW campus in Louisa County, Virginia, a 496 MW campus in Mesa, Arizona, and a 216 MW campus in Reno, Nevada.. The developer-operator also secured $1.5 billion in construction financing this year for two fully leased hyperscale facilities in Northern Virginia.
Its Louisa County campus represents more than $17 billion in planned investment.. Julie Brewer, EdgeCore’s executive vice president of finance, said signing the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge did not change the company’s approach to power costs.. Related:California Judge Orders Full Environmental Review of 330 MW Data Center.
“Signing this pledge is a natural extension of the way we’ve done business historically,” Brewer said.. EdgeCore expects to bear the cost of the infrastructure required to deliver power to its campuses, Brewer said.. “We expect to bear 100% of the costs,” she said..
Brewer said larger campuses have changed the dollar value of those commitments, even though the company’s approach has remained the same.. Five years ago, a large data center might have required about 25 MW, she said. EdgeCore now focuses on campuses exceeding 300 MW..
Bringing power to a campus at that scale can cost tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars, Brewer said. She estimated that power-related infrastructure accounts for roughly 5% to 10% of a project’s upfront cost but would not provide project-level figures.. Pledge Sets A Standard.
The White House launched the Ratepayer Protection Pledge in March, calling on data center operators to build, bring or buy the power needed for their facilities and pay for new delivery infrastructure, including network upgrades. The administration expanded the pledge in July to include utilities, cooperatives, states and data center developers..
The pledge establishes a policy commitment, but it does not determine how utilities assign costs or what a developer must pay under a tariff.. That matters when a large load triggers upgrades beyond the facilities directly connecting it to the grid.. Neil Osnato, founder of Persistence Analytics Group, said EdgeCores position is consistent with the pledges intent, but full cost responsibility is more complicated than paying for facilities directly connected to a data center..
Related:QumulusAI Scales GPUs, but Powered Capacity Sets the Pace. “The real cost-allocation question becomes: Which costs would not exist but for the data center, which costs produce broader regional benefits, and which investments were already needed for baseline reliability?” Osnato said..
A large data center can directly require a new substation, transformer bank or transmission line. Those costs are relatively easy to assign to the customer.. Farther upstream, the load can affect power flows, congestion, reserve requirements and broader transmission planning.
Some resulting investments may benefit other customers as well.. “It is realistic for a data center to commit to paying all identifiable customer-specific incremental costs,” Osnato said. “It is much harder to prove prospectively that every system cost attributable to the load has been captured.”.
That makes the tariff and regulatory process critical. A developer can commit to paying its costs, but utilities and regulators determine data center costs under the applicable rules.. SRP Shows The Model.
EdgeCore would not provide project-level figures showing how much it has paid for power infrastructure. Salt River Project confirmed that large customers in its territory must pay for the infrastructure they need.. Related:OpenAI Moves Energy Planning Inside Data Center Organization.
“We are committed to helping ensure new data centers in our service territory do not raise electric rates for residential customers,” an SRP spokesperson told Data Center Knowledge.. SRP requires large customers to pay for infrastructure such as upgraded transmission lines and substations, the utility said..
The utility introduced its Large Customer Integration Process in 2025. The process identifies infrastructure and other system upgrades required to serve proposed large-load customers, including data centers.. SRP provides the prospective customer with cost estimates for those upgrades and requires the customer to pay those costs upfront, the utility said..
The utility also updated its E-67 price plan in 2025. Customers with at least 20 MW of forecast demand that take service after November 2025 must meet minimum billing requirements based on actual use or 80% of forecast demand, in addition to paying for dedicated transmission and substation service..
The requirement helps protect SRP from building generation for large customers that later consume less electricity than expected. SRP records also show how infrastructure serving a large data center can be structured.. The records do not identify the customer, but they show a customer-dedicated Hartman Substation and a five-pole, 69-kilovolt line extension serving a commercial data center customer in Mesas Elliot Road Technology Corridor..
Brewer said the arrangement supports EdgeCores Mesa campus. She said EdgeCore made deposits and paid SRP’s construction costs for the substation supporting its initial 26 MW building.. As EdgeCore expanded the campus, it increased its capital commitment to SRP, including costs associated with transmission and generation, Brewer said..
“We have similarly expanded our capital commitment to Salt River Project to ensure that the transmission, overhead, underground, the generation, the cost of that is being borne by EdgeCore versus the local community,” she said.. SRP’s records establish the dedicated infrastructure and cost-recovery structure.
They do not establish how much EdgeCore paid, and SRP declined to identify the customer.. ‘Full Cost’ Needs Definition. Generation presents another unresolved part of EdgeCore’s pledge..
Brewer said EdgeCore expects to pay for generation as part of the cost of serving its campuses. The company did not specify whether those obligations involve owned generation, contracted capacity, dedicated procurement or utility charges under project-specific arrangements.. The pledge also covers generation, calling on data center operators to build, bring or buy new or additional generation and pay associated costs, whether the power is ultimately used or not..
EdgeCore would also not provide a specific example of its largest generation or transmission commitment.. Brewer said the company will walk away from a project if the cost, structure or risk of supplying power makes the project financially unworkable.. “Put bluntly, yes,” Brewer said when asked whether EdgeCore would abandon a project because of its power economics..
She said EdgeCore has not experienced a complete project cancellation after significant infrastructure investment.. The company also bears the cost of project delays after making infrastructure commitments, Brewer said.. The underlying principle is straightforward: EdgeCore does not want existing utility customers to bear the costs incurred by its data centers..
The harder part is determining where those costs end.. A pledge can establish a developer’s intent. A tariff establishes its legal obligation.
The cost-allocation process determines whether those obligations capture the infrastructure and system costs caused by the load.. As EdgeCore and other developers build campuses measured in hundreds of megawatts and more than a gigawatt, that boundary is becoming one of the central questions in data center power development..
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