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The price of electricity has gone up 30% on average in the U.S. since 2021. That's according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. In Tucson, a big, proposed rate increase has people blaming a big new data center that's under construction. They're asking state regulators to step in. Arizona Public Media's Katya Mendoza reports.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Left and center.
KATYA MENDOZA, BYLINE: At Tucson's Dancing In The Streets Arizona dance studio, ballerinas wearing black leotards, mesh skirts and pink tights stretch their legs alongside two gray bars.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And also (ph).
MENDOZA: The nonprofit offers classical ballet training to low-income students. But co-owner Soleste Lupu says they can't afford the 13% higher price of electricity that their utility is proposing.
SOLESTE LUPU: We do not recover our costs from the tuition from low-income families. We have no way to pass that on. We're not a restaurant. They'll just drop out.
MENDOZA: I met Lupu at a town hall put on by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes. Mayes says the rate increase Tucson Electric Power, or TEP, is asking for is too high.
KRIS MAYES: Our evidence shows that TEP only needs a maximum 4% rate increase to be able to maintain its system and to attract capital in debt.
MENDOZA: Mayes says TEP's 13% increase request is tied to its agreement to supply a data center with 286 megawatts of electricity - enough to supply more than half the homes in Tucson.
MAYES: Yeah. I'm very worried about the future for consumers, given the massive onslaught of data centers into states like Arizona. It is really kind of uncontrolled right now.
MENDOZA: Tucson Electric Power spokesman Joe Barrios says Mayes is wrong, that the utility is only asking to raise rates to cover the cost of things it's already built.
JOE BARRIOS: Our application does not incorporate any costs for large new data centers of any sort.
MENDOZA: He says the attorney general...
BARRIOS: Makes a faulty assumption, and that's that our request could be cut without risking customers' service reliability.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) Hey, hey. Ho, ho. Project Blue has got to go.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Hey, hey. Ho, ho.
MENDOZA: At this protest in April, a couple dozen people temporarily blocked traffic coming out of the data center construction site.
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UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTER: (Chanting) Project Blue has got to go.
UNIDENTIFIED PROTESTERS: (Chanting) Hey, hey. Ho, ho.
MENDOZA: Arizona's Corporation Commission regulates the local utility. In December, it approved its agreement to supply electricity to the data center. Mayes asked the commission to revisit that decision. It declined. In July, the commission will hold another hearing on whether to grant the utility's 13% rate increase request.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: So that stretch that we were doing, that back lengthen...
MENDOZA: Back at Soleste Lupu's dance studio, she's preparing for the higher electric bills that come every summer in Tucson. She says, here, you can't dance without air conditioning. She hopes the Corporation Commission will deny the rate increase. Either way, she wants people to remember this in November.
LUPU: I really want people to understand that when you go to vote, the Corporation Commission is our only power that we can do to make a change 'cause they're the ones that make the decision.
MENDOZA: Two of the commission's five seats are being contested in November. For NPR News, I'm Katya Mendoza in Tucson.
(SOUNDBITE OF DIXON SONG, "LA NOCTURNE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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