Demand for electricity is expected to go up in Delaware especially with the prospect of new data centers. In our partnership with Spotlight Delaware Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with reporter Olivia Marble about efforts to hold down those increases.
RUSH: The price of electricity could rise sharply in Delaware over the coming years, especially with the number of proposals for data centers. This is Don Rush. A new analysis found that the demand for electricity could double by the year 2029, but lawmakers are already taking steps to deal with the power hungry data centers and moving legislation that would allow Delaware Electric Cooperative to deny such facilities. In our partnership with Spotlight Delaware, we talk with reporter Olivia Marble about the latest developments.
MARBLE: This legislation would allow the Delaware Electric Cooperative, which is Southern Delaware's primary electric utility to reject request from large new energy customers, which includes data centers. So it allows the utility to say, "actually, you know what? We did analysis and we found that if you connect to our grid, then you would raise electric prices for consumers." And basically it gives them the power to say no. Because right now, under current state law, they can't say no to any customer that wants to connect to the grid for any reason. They have to connect any sort of user that wants to come into their service area.
RUSH: So in addition to being able to say no, do they also have the option to say, require the data center itself to generate some power?
MARBLE: Delaware Electric Cooperative, CEO, Rob Book told me that that is his intention... [it's] not necessarily to just say no outright to large users like data centers, but instead to say, "hey, we're not going to say yes unless you bring your own power generation or contract with a third party supplier." Which right now they actually don't have any third party suppliers in the service area, but that could be a possibility in the future. So the idea of that would be then the large energy user wouldn't expose other customers in the grid to the risks from the wholesale market. Because right now, Delaware Electric Cooperative doesn't need to buy that much power from the regional grid because it has its own energy generation. And it also is part of this larger collaborative of electric cooperatives. And if there was a very large energy user, then they probably would have to buy power from the larger regional grid, PJM. And what Rob Book said was that he fears that would add a lot of uncertainty to the power prices that people are seeing, and most likely those prices would go up, people's electric bills would go up.
RUSH: Now I understand, obviously there's a new report out... a study which indicates that the energy demand could double by 2029. What's the essence of this study?
MARBLE: So this study looks into the wholesale electric prices in the state of Delaware and how they would be affected by the addition of new data centers. And they specifically analyzed what's called locational marginal prices, which is the cost of utilities to buy electricity at a given moment within a very specific area. Now, those prices don't directly show up on energy bills, but the trends in them often very closely align with the supply side of electricity bills.
RUSH: Spotlight Delaware reporter Olivia Marble on the Delaware efforts to cope with a rising electricity costs. The full interview can be heard on Delmarva today or on our website at delmarvapublicmedia.org. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
