Manufacturing News
October 29, 2026
October 29, 2026 · Statewide · Story 5 of 5
CenterPoint's $1.2 Billion Capex Plan Hides an Indiana Ratepayer Fight
CenterPoint Energy CEO Jason Wells told investors in late July that the Houston based utility is adding $1.2 billion to its $65.5 billion capital plan, with most of the increase driven by 17 gigawatts of large load data center projects submitted to ERCOT. CenterPoint also serves parts of Indiana, and Wells disclosed a separate roughly 700 megawatt Indiana deal that would require about $700 million in grid work. By Wells' own math of roughly $6 million per gigawatt per month in demand charges, that single Indiana deal could generate about $50 million a year in new revenue before any return gets added to the rate base. The Hoosier Environmental Council has already filed comments with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission arguing that serving out of state data center load with dispatchable fossil generation sends the economic benefit elsewhere while leaving Hoosier ratepayers with the pollution and grid costs. Texas gives a preview of how fast this can turn: five days after Wells' call, Governor Abbott ordered ERCOT to audit and pause the same Batch Zero approvals CenterPoint had just touted to investors.
- Impact
- Wells' own demand-charge math (roughly $6 million per gigawatt per month) means that single 700 MW Indiana deal could generate about $50 million a year in new revenue before any rate-base return, but the Hoosier Environmental Council has already filed IRP comments with the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission arguing that serving out-of-state data-center load with dispatchable fossil generation exports the economic benefit while leaving Hoosier ratepayers with pollution and grid costs. For Indiana manufacturers competing with hyperscalers for interconnection queue space, CenterPoint's Texas experience is a preview: five days after this call, Texas Gov. Abbott ordered ERCOT to audit and pause the same Batch Zero approvals CenterPoint was touting to Wall Street.
- Watch
- The Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission's docket on CenterPoint Energy Indiana South's integrated resource plan, where the Hoosier Environmental Council's objections are pending.
- For the huddle
As utilities prioritize capital toward large-load data center customers, what's our plan if our own interconnection requests get queued behind a hyperscaler project?
Call your utility's interconnection group now and ask directly where your pending or planned request sits relative to any large load projects in the queue, because a 700 megawatt data center deal can push a smaller industrial request back by months.
Sources
From the brief, October 29, 2026
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- CenterPoint's $1.2 Billion Capex Plan Hides an Indiana Ratepayer Fight
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