AES Indiana Phase 2 Takes Effect in January. No Stay Is in Place.

Daniel BurkePublished every day

If you are in AES Indiana territory, this is the number to put in your 2027 operating budget now. Phase 1 of a $71 million base-rate increase took effect July 27. Phase 2 takes effect in January 2027. The IURC did schedule a one-day evidentiary rehearing for early March 2027, but the Office of Utility Consumer Counselor did not request a stay. That means AES Indiana collects Phase 2 in January. Any refund, if the rehearing produces one, comes after the bill, not before.

The IURC order cites $8.50 per month for an average residential account. Industrial rate schedules are structured differently. The actual increase on your facility depends on your rate class and your load profile. A residential average tells you almost nothing about what hits your bill. Pull your current tariff sheet and map the Phase 2 increase against your actual rate class.

The March 2027 hearing is the earliest the rate picture could change. Model your 2027 budget against the January increase now.

Impact

The structural mechanism buried in this story is the 'collect first, litigate later' dynamic that the IURC itself is now investigating through its concurrent review of utility return-on-equity levels and tracker mechanisms, a review that threatens all five Indiana investor-owned utilities, not just AES Indiana. The Google Monrovia data center disclosure issue is not merely a procedural CAC win: MISO and AES filings show the Monrovia substation is built for 1,200 MW of ultimate load, but Cause No. 46394 covers only the first 390 MW phase, meaning at least two more multi-hundred-megawatt approval rounds are coming, each with their own rate-case adjacency that could further move the cost baseline. For Indianapolis-area manufacturers, the January Phase 2 increase on residential accounts translates into meaningfully higher industrial rate structures, compounding the approximately 6% additional bill increase AES Indiana already signaled customers would see in 2026 from previously approved tracker projects, at the precise moment the GIP/BlackRock acquisition (expected to close late 2026/early 2027) transfers refund liability to new private owners rather than AES Corp's current public shareholders.

Watch

Watch the early March 2027 IURC evidentiary rehearing date on the AES Indiana Cause No. 46394 proceeding: specifically whether the commission's concurrent ROE and tracker investigation produces any interim guidance before that hearing that could affect whether Phase 2 rates are modified, frozen, or subject to expanded refund exposure.

For the huddle

My facility is in AES Indiana territory. How do I find out what the Phase 2 rate increase actually costs us?

Pull your current rate schedule and identify your rate class. The residential average of $8.50 per month does not apply to industrial accounts. Your actual increase depends on your rate class and load profile. Request your tariff sheet from AES Indiana directly, or pull it from the IURC tariff database, and map the Phase 2 rate against your 12-month billing history to get a dollar figure you can put in your 2027 operating budget.

From the brief, September 25, 2026

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