MEI’s recent column in the Mississippi Business Journal made the case for how data center development is what Mississippi’s electric grid needed to take pressure off rising costs and better stabilize electricity rates for the future, keeping MS a low-cost electricity state. Read the full column here. A few excerpts:
That’s why data centers can be ideal additions to an electric system and good for the other customers on the system. When more electricity is flowing over the same lines, the fixed costs of the entire system are now spread over many more kilowatt hours, just by adding one or several large customers…
Considering the path electric systems were on just a few years ago, large-load data centers are just the thing needed to take pressure off of rising electricity rates. Over the last few years, you may have noticed, electricity rates have risen, but why? Not data centers. Not higher natural gas prices. Inflation. The cost of just about everything rose much more sharply than normal from 2022-2025, and electricity followed.
Still, Mississippi comes in with electricity rates 16% lower than the national average. We want to keep it that way, right? The best way to do that is by growing the system, making the pie bigger and spreading costs across a growing consumer base. By the way, the same principle applies to taxes and public revenue, of which data center development can be a tax windfall, especially locally.
