Oklahoma Corporation Commissioners are being urged by one of their Administrative Law Judges to approve a power agreement settlement between Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co. and Google.
The utility and Google were asking the commission for preapproval of OG&E’s agreement to provide electrical power to three new Google data centers in the state. A Wednesday hearing was recessed for several hours while the parties involved reached a settlement agreement, according to OKPoliticsToday.
The settlement requires Google to pay the full cost of power lines and other equipment used specifically to connect its data centers to OG&E’s system.
The settlement was signed by the attorney general and the Public Utility Division of the Corporation Commission as well as Google and OG&E. It was not signed by Oklahoma Industrial Energy Consumers, however the Tulsa-based group also said it would not oppose the settlement. The Oklahoma Sustainability Network did not participate in the hearing and had not stated whether it supported or opposed the agreement. No one presented testimony against it.
“There were a lot of conversations, a lot of give and take, a lot of robust discussions,” said David Scalf, a program manager with the Public Utility Division.
Scalf said the plan for measuring the data centers’ effect on other customers was a major point of disagreement and went through multiple revisions.
The ALJ’s statement was an oral recommendation, not a final written decision.
Protections for other customers
OG&E regulatory affairs director Kimber Shoop said the company recognized that adding the data centers would produce a rapid increase in demand for electricity.
“We needed to make sure that we did it thoughtfully and with the right customer protections,” Shoop said.
OG&E would review the effect of the Google contracts during future rate cases. Those reviews are intended to determine whether serving the data centers raises or lowers costs for other customers.
The settlement does not promise customers a specific amount of savings. It establishes a process for measuring the effect after the data centers begin operating and more information becomes available.
OG&E said it has not identified any broader power-grid upgrades caused directly by the Google projects. If that changes, the company must notify the commission and the parties within 30 days. How those additional costs would be paid would be decided in a future commission case.
Google also would be required to make minimum payments even if the data centers use less electricity than expected.
