Google has committed to covering the costs to build a new solar and battery facility that will generate energy for one of its new data centers in Arkansas, though regular consumers are also footing the bill for part of the power plant’s construction. The new data center in West Memphis, Arkansas, is set to be […]
Page F5From§Eachthe breakfast edition — 30 September 2026
Google covering full cost of Arkansas power plant; customers billed for part of the full cost
As it ran on the front
"Full costs" is the phrase, and it is worth turning over before it gets away from you. Entergy says Google is covering the full costs of building a new solar and battery facility to power one data center at West Memphis. Full. And the regular consumers of Arkansas are footing the bill for part of that plant's construction as well. Both sentences stand. Nothing broke — no meter misread, no clerk asleep — the rates were designed this way, filed this way, and they are performing.
You are waiting for the part where somebody made a mistake. Keep waiting.…
…(cont) And how much is "part of it"? The utility says part of it. Part.
Someone will say Congress has handled this. In September the House passed the Ratepayer Protection Act, bipartisan, aimed at putting data center electricity costs on the technology companies. Then read it: the states must consider standards. Consider ... precatory language, which asks and does not bind, and which requires no state to regulate anyone.
Google is covered. Arkansas households pay for part of a power plant built for a data center, and their state has been invited to think about it.
The village hauled the stone. Inside the new wall, the squire grazes his horses.
“A company tells you it's paying the full freight for its own power plant, and then your utility turns around and puts part of the construction on your bill anyway — that's not a billing error, that's the deal as written. Google gets solar and batteries for a data center in West Memphis; the guy in West Memphis gets a line item. And the big fix out of Washington? A bill that asks states to maybe think about it.”
“Google committed to covering the costs, full stop — customers paying for part of it doesn't change that Google is paying for it, which, obviously, it is. Did I say that? That doesn't sound like me. And the House just passed a bipartisan ratepayer bill, so this is being addressed, and I'd rather not get into which parts of it states actually have to do.”
The receipts
· House approves bill aimed at putting data center electricity costs on tech companies from the morgue, 16 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.