President Donald Trump isn’t the only American figurehead with tariffs on his mind.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission held a public, livestreamed hearing on Thursday, April 24, in Harrisburg to hear testimony about the possibility of establishing a tariff structure for “large-load” power customers in the Keystone State.

The hearing was called mainly to address the growing proliferation of large-scale data centers across Pennsylvania, which is being driven by the artificial intelligence boom. Representatives from four tech companies (including Google and Amazon), four power companies (including FirstEnergy, who operates in Butler County under the name West Penn Power), and two state entities testified at the hearing.

“Pennsylvania is an attractive location for data center operators due to low-cost rural land and property taxes as well as a currently abundant supply of natural gas and excess electricity,” said Allison Kaster of the PUC’s Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement during her testimony.

Major power companies across the state are struggling to keep up with these data centers’ ever-increasing consumption. In her testimony, Kaster cited a study that estimated energy usage in Virginia would increase 183% by 2040, largely thanks to its own data-center boom.

According to C. James Davis of Duquesne Light, one data center could account for as much as 30% of the peak load of their entire service area, which covers Allegheny and Beaver counties.

All the while, the function of data centers has become more and more indispensable to our daily lives.

“Today, there is unprecedented demand for the digital services that have become central to our daily lives and modern economy,” said Lucas Fykes of the Data Center Coalition. “The role of data centers is expected to grow as consumers and businesses generate twice as much data in the next five years as they did in the past decade.”

In his initial motion, PUC chairman Stephen DeFrank said the goals of establishing a model large-load tariff system for Pennsylvania’s biggest power users are to establish a structure for large-load customers to connect to the grid, as well as protecting average ratepayers against unexpected costs.

“We seek to establish just and reasonable tariffs that provide open and nondiscriminatory access to our public utility systems while protecting existing customers from undue burdens and costs,” DeFrank wrote.

Those unexpected costs would come from “stranded investments,” in which the average ratepayer is forced to bear the burden of supporting a data center that does not operate at the load it was expect to support. Darryl Lawrence, acting Consumer Advocate for Pennsylvania, recommended that the proposed tariff structure come with financial guarantees against large-load customers to prevent such an occurrence.

“Any stranded investments from large-load customers paid by ratepayers hinders economic development by raising the cost to businesses and reducing spending by residents,” Lawrence said.

Similar proceedings regarding large load tariffs are taking place, or have recently taken place, in Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Kansas, Missouri and Oregon.

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission is welcoming public comment on the hearing from interested parties until May 27, followed by replies to those comments until June 11.