Indiana's Statewide Rate Pattern and the Data Center Cost Shift

The AES increase is not isolated. All five Indiana investor-owned utilities are raising rates simultaneously. NIPSCO residential customers absorbed a 26.7% increase in the past year on top of a prior 17.8% hike. Duke Energy Indiana secured roughly $295.7 million in annual revenue increases. CenterPoint bills surged 25%.

The structural driver is the same across all five: data center load is being absorbed through the existing rate structure rather than through dedicated large-load rate classes. Ohio and Virginia are advancing requirements that data centers fund their own grid infrastructure. Indiana has not taken that step.

NIPSCO reached a settlement with Amazon to build dedicated generation capacity funded by Amazon, projecting nearly $1 billion in ratepayer savings over 15 years (the utility's own estimate, not independently verified by OUCC). AES has no equivalent arrangement for the Metrobloks and Sabey data center proposals in its territory. The IURC's expected September 2026 order on the AES-Google Monrovia contract will set the Indiana template on whether data centers fund their own infrastructure or continue spreading those costs across every ratepayer on the system.