Oklahoma's Data Center Customer Ratepayer Protection Act Requires Every Electric Supplier to Keep Separate Tariffs for Large Load Customers

Oklahoma's legislature passed House Bill 2992, the Data Center Customer Ratepayer Protection Act of 2026, in both houses on May 5, 2026. The legislature's own record of the bill shows it "Approved by Governor 05/11/2026". The act sets rules for the electric service of what it calls large load customers, and protections for the rates of residential, commercial and industrial customers. Parts of the act follow, not the whole.

Who Counts, and Which Suppliers the Act Covers

The act defines a "large load customer" as new data centers, new cryptocurrency mining operations and new facilities "whose primary function is artificial-intelligence computing facilities" that contract with an electric supplier to add 75 MW "or greater electric load per facility or in aggregate behind a single point of interconnection to an electric supplier's load after July 1, 2026."

The definition then names who is outside it. It "does not include residential, commercial, agricultural, or industrial ratepayers, or those entities that build generation for behind-the-meter projects." Section 5 says the act "applies to all retail electric suppliers serving load in this state, including investor-owned utilities regulated by the Corporation Commission, electric cooperatives, municipal electric utilities, and public power utilities."

Separate Terms, Conditions and Tariffs

Section 3 is addressed to the bodies that review rates. Any governing body responsible for reviewing electric supplier rates "shall ensure that residential, commercial and industrial customers are protected from paying unjust rates resulting directly from electric service to large load customers," and that costs and revenues are allocated "in accordance with cost causation principles." The act defines cost causation itself: customers responsible for the supplier incurring a cost "should be allocated their equitable share of those costs".

Section 4 turns to the suppliers. All electric suppliers "shall establish and maintain separate terms and conditions of electric service applicable to any large load customer and shall create and maintain separate tariffs applicable to such large load customers." Those terms and tariffs must include credit requirements and any other measures necessary to ensure the customers reimburse the supplier for all costs fairly allocated to them, "including costs incurred to directly serve the customer that may remain unrecovered if the customer departs the system or materially reduces load."

The same section sets the term. "The term of service for a large load customer shall be at least ten (10) years." A public power utility using tax-exempt municipal financing has a rule of its own: the term is "the lesser of ten (10) years or the applicable Internal Revenue Service Guideline."

The credit requirement in each supplier's tariff, and what it says about a customer that departs or materially reduces load, is the page a lender would want to read.

Notice When the Land Is Bought

Section 7 is about land. A large load customer, or "any developer, owner, or entity acting on behalf of a large load customer," that purchases land in the state outside an industrial development park or a municipality must notify the Corporation Commission, the county commissioners of the county in which the land is purchased, and adjacent property owners whose property abuts the land, within sixty days after the land is purchased. The notice goes by certified mail.

Failing to give proper notice carries a penalty. The buyer "shall be subject to an administrative penalty of One Thousand Five Hundred Dollars ($1,500.00) per day, per violation," collected and enforced by the county commissioners where the land is located. Where a project uses land in two or more counties, the penalty is divided among the counties by the percentage of land in each.

Who Enforces It, and From When

The Corporation Commission "may promulgate rules" to carry out the act, and for electric suppliers whose rates it regulates it has "exclusive jurisdiction to enforce the provisions of this act within its authority." The suppliers are bound as well: "Retail electric suppliers shall comply with this act as a condition of providing service to large load customers."

Section 8 says the act "shall become effective July 1, 2026." Section 9 declares an emergency, "by reason whereof this act shall take effect and be in full force from and after its passage and approval." Both sections stand in the enrolled text.

How will each supplier write the credit requirements that the act asks its separate tariffs to include?