MEA surveys members on potential data center development

Matanuska Electric Association wants to know what its members think about data centers coming to its system: what they would mean for rates, for reliability, for the power supply, for infrastructure, for their communities. There is no facility on the table, no site picked and no developer named.

The co-op sent survey invitations by email and text to randomly chosen members this week. The survey "does not mean MEA has approved a specific data center project," the utility said, and getting an invitation does not mean anything is planned for a member's property or town.

MEA's fuel and power charge, the piece of the bill that moves with the cost of generating electricity, went up this quarter from about 7.9 cents a kilowatt-hour to 10.2. For a typical household that is roughly $14.53 more a month. The increase has nothing to do with data centers, but members are being asked about future load growth while paying more for the load they already have.

The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority has asked the state for 19,950 acres north of Houston, inside MEA's service area, at no cost. Its application lists data centers among the intended uses, alongside a rail-served industrial park, manufacturing, utility corridors and gravel extraction. AIDEA's Kelvin Goode said of that land: "We don't have a single project in hand, no proposal, no nothing." More than 2,000 people wrote to the state about it, and the Mat-Su Assembly passed a resolution asking AIDEA to build at Point MacKenzie instead.

MEA says its existing tariff protects current members from costs generated by large new customers. Whether that holds is the subject of a bill in Juneau: Senate Bill 250 would bar utilities from recovering data center costs from other ratepayers and require state approval of each contract. It passed the Senate in May and has sat in a House committee since.

Members who want to confirm a survey message is real can call MEA at 907-761-9300.