SALT LAKE CITY, Utah — It currently takes around four gigawatts of energy to power the entire state of Utah each year, but two planned data centers could more than quadruple that consumption.
One in Millard County is working toward an energy capacity of more than 10 megawatts, while another in Box Elder County is targeting nine megawatts. And more are coming.
But as Utah faces an energy deficit caused by increasing demand and decreasing supply, "there's not enough power in Utah to provide these data centers what they need,” notes Shon Hiatt, a University of Southern California professor who has studied Utah’s data center landscape. “Especially at this scale.”
That's why many data centers under development in the state are now opting to bring their own energy.
The move to what's sometimes referred to as “behind the meter” or “off-the-grid" energy comes after the Utah Legislature approved a new law last year that created an alternative process to provide power to large-load customers.
"If they can't get it from the utility, Utah — with that law that just passed this session — basically says, ‘Oh, well then we'll give you permission to build your own power, bring your own,’” Hiatt said in an interview.
His research for the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute found that seven data centers currently under construction will use nearly three times as much energy as all the ones that currently exist in the state combined. More than half of that energy will be “behind the meter.”
Celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary’s controversial Stratos project in Box Elder County, for example, would tap directly into a natural gas pipeline near the Great Salt Lake called the Ruby Pipeline. Creekstone Energy, which is building what’s been billed as the “world’s largest data center” in Delta, plans to tap the Kern River Gas Pipeline and will also bring its own solar energy.
While state law has greased the wheels, the “bring your own energy” movement also comes amid growing concerns nationally about how data centers could impact prices for ratepayers around the country.
President Donald Trump called on hyperscale data centers in March to “build, bring, or buy” all their needed energy and to pay “the full cost of their energy and infrastructure, no matter what.”
Abe Silverman, an assistant research scholar at Johns Hopkins University who focuses on energy markets and data centers, said there is "bipartisan" consensus that "data centers need to pay their own way.”
“Grandma should not be subsidizing Google’s electric bill,” he said.
The state hasn’t seen cost increases from data centers yet, according to Michele Beck, director of the Utah Office of Consumer Services. She told FOX 13 News that she believes Utah laws will continue to protect ratepayers from electricity rate spikes moving forward (though natural gas is a more complicated picture).
“What SB132 has done is create pathways so that the data centers themselves can be responsible for procuring their power,” she said in an interview. “And then that helps to keep the shifts away from the regular customers.”
But Olivia Douglas — a Bountiful resident who recently moved back to Utah from the northern Virginia area known as “Data Center Alley” — is skeptical the state will be able to mitigate the environmental and cost impacts of hyperscale data centers.
"You can’t create energy out of thin air,” she said in an interview. “You can’t create water out of thin air. It has to come from somewhere. And then who’s paying for it?”
WATCH: Hiatt, with USC, explains why data centers would rather not bring their own energy
'A geographically specific picture’
When Douglas and her family first moved to Prince William County, Virginia — a “beautiful area” with lots of trees — she had no idea there were data centers there.
But as more came into the area, she started feeling their impacts. The construction boom increased traffic, she said, and the community began to feel “more industrial by the day.”
Douglas, who recently moved back to Utah in part over concerns about quality of life and rising costs, also blames data centers for spikes in her monthly electricity bill.
"Over the course of, I want to say, like five years, energy prices rose 30%,” she estimated. “Even within the last couple of months, I still am in contact with neighbors and they’re seeing even more increases — jumping $100, $200 a month in their energy bills.”
Prince William County is home to at least 41 data centers, with 70 more on the way, according to the U.S. Data Center Map. (Research from the Kem C. Gardner Institute found, by comparison, that there are currently 48 operational data centers in the entire state of Utah.)
While it can be difficult at times to parse the impact of data centers on energy prices, Silverman said there’s “pretty clear evidence” that they have contributed to rising costs in some regions, including in Virginia.
But “it is very much a geographically specific picture,” he added.
A Bloomberg analysis published last year found electricity rates spiked as much as 267% per month compared to the previous five years in areas near “significant data center activity.” But the Data Center Coalition, a group that represents the industry, points to reports showing rising energy costs are instead a product of inflation, grid modernization, natural gas volatility and other dynamics.
Hiatt’s research found minimal data center impacts on energy prices in the United States between 2019 and 2025, though he stresses “that was looking backwards.”
“Moving forward, though, I think we are at a risk,” he added.
Experts agree the picture is particularly complex when it comes to questions about how data centers could impact the price of natural gas, a traded commodity that also heats homes.
“I think the natural gas side will be trickier because so much of it is federally regulated or subject to market forces,” said Beck, with the Utah Office of Consumer Services, which advocates on behalf of ratepayers.
The protections Utah legislators passed last year, she noted, don’t extend to natural gas.
Silverman, with Johns Hopkins University, agrees that the “jury’s still out on exactly how these data centers are going to affect the price” of this resource.
But both said large-scale data centers could have an impact.
“And then all of us are going to feel the pain of higher costs because of more constriction on the supply,” Beck said.
As the state works to mitigate the impacts of data centers, Beck believes the Beehive State is ahead of the game on protecting consumers. But she said it can be difficult at times for regulators to keep up with the fast pace of technological change.
“The regulatory system is working to make sure that those costs don’t get shifted, to the extent that we have tools,” she said. “And to the extent we don’t have tools, we’ve got to look to our elected officials to try to find creative solutions.”
Douglas sees the rise of data centers as an inevitability, “unless everybody’s willing to turn off their internet right now.”
But she remains concerned about how these developments will affect quality of life in Utah, an area she argues is “already stretched so thin” when it comes to water resources and grid capacity.
As more data centers look to develop here, she hopes state leaders will learn from places like Virginia to ensure as few impacts as possible on the environment, communities and people's pocketbooks.
“I would hope they’re looking at these other areas and saying, ‘What can we learn from how this has affected the local citizens that are already there?’” she said.
But she added, “I’m a little skeptical as to whether or not they’re actually doing that. So I’m holding out on my judgment on that to see a little bit more of what they actually put in place.”