The AES Indiana Rate Hike Rehearing Covers Two Issues, Your Bill Covers All of Them

A September 30 order from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission limits the rehearing to two issues: Google's Monrovia data center in Morgan County, and the BlackRock-led purchase of AES's parent company. The evidentiary hearing happens March 11, 2027, in Indianapolis. That hearing is where evidence gets presented, not where a ruling gets issued.

The $71 million increase keeps applying to your bill in the meantime. The Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor never requested a stay on the increase, so there was nothing to pause. The IURC says rates stay subject to refund if a court later overturns the order, but how much would come back to your specific rate class, if anything, has not been decided.

Indiana Michigan Power has proposed a $59 million rate cut and is crediting data center load growth for it. The Citizens Action Coalition argues that same load growth should be lowering AES Indiana's rates too. That is their argument. It has not been proven inside AES's case. NIPSCO is absorbing a 20% increase of its own, and Duke is fighting an alleged $89 million over-collection claim, so the picture across Indiana's investor-owned utilities is mixed, not uniform.

There is a second clock running underneath this one. FERC is reviewing the BlackRock and GIP purchase of AES's parent, and five U.S. lawmakers have urged FERC to reject it, citing GIP's ownership of 40 data centers nationwide. If FERC rules on that purchase before the March hearing, the cost-of-capital assumptions baked into AES's rehearing could be outdated before the hearing even opens.

Have your energy manager model phase two against your actual rate class and your actual demand profile. A residential figure like $8.50 a month tells you nothing about what your facility will pay. Treat any eventual refund as upside, and keep it out of your 2027 budget entirely.