Ohio HB 646 / statewide AEP-template / 48-hour timeline

Plain-English framing. Last year (effective July 23, 2025), Ohio's Public Utilities Commission approved AEP Ohio's first-of-its-kind data center tariff: any new data center load above a threshold has to sign a 12-year supply contract and commit to paying for at least 85% of its requested megawatts every month even if it consumes less. The point is to stop a hyperscaler from announcing a 500 MW campus, forcing the utility to build $1B of substations and transmission, and then quietly downsizing to 200 MW after the steel is in the ground — leaving the rest of AEP Ohio's residential and small-business customers paying for the stranded infrastructure. HB 646 makes that template the law. Instead of one utility's PUCO docket, every Ohio utility — Duke Ohio, AES Ohio, FirstEnergy's three subsidiaries (Ohio Edison, CEI, Toledo Edison), and AEP Ohio — would have to file its own version. The bill also adds a surety bond equal to 10 years of average data center worker salaries, restricts NDAs in data center siting deals (so the public can see the terms), and adds water-use and testing requirements. The legislative speed is the news. The Senate Energy Committee was scheduled to advance the bill the morning of June 10, with a possible full Senate vote the same day. Bills that pass committee and floor inside a single day are extraordinary, and the sponsors (Reps. Tristan Rader and Josh Thomas in the House, Sen. Brian Chavez in the Senate) are bipartisan — which is what makes the 48-hour timeline plausible.

Primary source · Statehouse News Bureau / Ohio Capital Journal / Rep. Rader press release ↗