Bill > A796

This bill requires electric public utilities in New Jersey to develop and apply special tariffs—meaning official rate schedules—and service rules specifically for large data centers, defined as facilities with a peak energy demand of 50 megawatts or more, in order to protect residential and other non-data center customers from bearing increased electricity, transmission, and distribution costs. Under the legislation, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU), the state agency that regulates public utilities, must establish statewide standards ensuring that large data center customers fully cover their own infrastructure and cost allocations without causing other ratepayers to subsidize them or risk paying for stranded costs if a facility scales back or closes. To qualify and maintain service, these data centers must provide adequate financial guarantees, such as deposits or financial commitments, to cover at least 85 percent of their requested electricity supply over a 10-year period, disclose any similar pending interconnection requests elsewhere to prevent speculative or duplicative planning, and implement energy efficiency technologies like heat capture. Furthermore, the bill incentivizes data centers to bring their own clean generation or storage resources online, engage in demand flexibility programs to reduce grid strain during peak hours, and participate in voluntary demand-reduction trades, while giving the BPU authority to prioritize their interconnections and establish fair curtailment protocols during grid emergencies.