Power & Sites · United States

What happened to Duke’s clean transition tariff?

Credited to Latitude Media · latitudemedia.com · 15h ago

In May 2024, Duke Energy said it was working with Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and steel company Nucor to develop a tariff structure for large loads coming online in the Carolinas to support clean energy. That framework, Duke explained at the time, would include a clean transition tariff, a rate structure originally developed by Google and Nevada Energy that allows large customers to fund novel clean energy resources without passing the costs of those not-yet-commercialized technologies on to other ratepayers.

That original announcement was made with much fanfare at a White House summit. But over two years later, it still hasn’t led to a formal tariff proposal. The next time Duke itself mentioned a CTT in an official proceeding was February 2026, when the idea resurfaced in a settlement over the proposed merger of Duke’s two Carolina utilities. In that settlement, Duke committed to “engaging with Google to receive and consider in good faith” a detailed proposal for a CTT.

(Google didn’t respond to a request for comment on whether it has since presented such a proposal.)

When Duke set out earlier this summer to develop a tariff to address massive data center growth in the Southeast, a broad swath of stakeholders, including regulators, large loads, environmental groups, and the North Carolina attorney general’s Office, supported the inclusion of a clean transition tariff.

“Duke Energy’s prior efforts to voluntarily establish a CTT have languished,” the attorney general noted.

The Clean Energy Buyers Association, meanwhile, went so far as to ask the commission to direct the utility to file a CTT within six months, citing the Trump administration’s ratepayer protection pledge: “A clean customer tariff provides a practical mechanism for customers to meet that commitment,” the association said.

Duke filed the final version of its large load tariff proposal this week. It requires large loads to cover the total cost of any new infrastructure dedicated to the project, to provide letters of credit to cover needed transmission upgrades, and to sign 10–15 year contracts, among other things. It has the support of large load customers including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. It does not, however, include a clean transition tariff.

“No party has presented even remotely sufficient detail to support a CTT program at this time,” Duke told the commission. Proponents of a CTT need to provide “extensive detail” on things like program design, pricing, and credits, so that the utility can “ensure the program does not harm non-participating customers,” the filing added.

However, according to testimony from commission staff, large load customers “tried to work with [Duke] and the Public Staff to implement a new clean transition tariff.”

Deprioritizing a CTT

At this point, the 2024 memorandum of understanding that Duke and the hyperscalers is essentially dead. Nick Jimenez, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, which represents environmental and clean energy advocates in proceedings before the North Carolina Utilities Commission, said nobody involved considers it currently active.

After that initial announcement, there were around 18 months of back and forth, but the parties “just never got to where they needed to get to file something.” (None of the parties to the announcement responded to Latitude Media ’s request for comment.)

That initial delay was disappointing, but last October, when the commission held a technical conference on large load tariffs, things started to look up. “It was telegraphed coming out of that proceeding that the rate cases were going to be the place to handle [a CTT],” Jimenez explained.

The possibility of a CTT came up again in a public stakeholder meeting earlier this year, and while “nobody was opposed, there were more things to figure out,” he said. The feeling in the room was that creating a large load tariff would be hard enough, and that developing a CTT in parallel would be overly complicated, Jimenez recalled. That’s not necessarily the position of SELC or of the large load customers, he clarified, but it was “the center of gravity in those discussions.”

In its filings this week, things became more official. Duke urged the commission to “decline to include any [CTT] provisions” in the rate case proceeding in part because the utility’s existing green tariff program “should be fully explored with respect to meeting large load customer needs before additional programs are determined to be necessary.”

Learn about the infrastructure decisions shaping speed, resilience, and growth for the next generation of data centers.

That program allows large electricity users to procure renewable energy and its associated environmental attributes through Duke, including by paying to accelerate some solar and storage projects. When regulators approved it in July 2024, shortly after the CTT announcement, critics argued the program would largely be used to subsidize renewable projects Duke was already likely to build, thanks to North Carolina’s 2050 carbon neutrality mandate, rather than drive additional development.

A clean transition tariff is intended to instead encourage the development of new carbon-free resources, like enhanced geothermal or long-duration energy storage, that wouldn’t be economical for the utility at such an early technological stage. To date, Nevada remains the only place where the framework has been formally adopted.

Duke isn’t alone in considering a CTT, including as part of a large load tariff. In Colorado, Xcel Energy subsidiary Public Service Company has proposed an optional CTT alongside its broader framework for interconnecting large loads. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s public utility commission directed Xcel to develop a clean energy and capacity tariff as part of its own large load proceeding. Xcel has already announced a custom, CTT-like arrangement with Google that involves developing a long-duration energy storage project to help power a new data center.

Power & SitesUnited States

Speed Bumps Slow Asia-Pacific’s Data Center Gold Rush

Credited to Data Center Knowledge · datacenterknowledge.com17h ago

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Firmus and PLDT pulled data center IPOs this week while governments pressed pause on development in the latest hurdles to Asia’s data center boom.

Asia-Pacific's hectic data center rollout has hit a series of speed bumps. The most dramatic by far was the collapse Friday of Australian-based Firmus’ planned AU$7.1 billion (US$4.97 billion) IPO, which had been expected to be the biggest ASX debut since Telstra’s 1997 IPO.

Firmus, a neocloud company whose shareholders include Blackstone, Jane Street and Nvidia, withdrew its ASX listing application Friday and said it would seek up to $3 billion through private fund-raising, the Financial Times has reported.

It had struggled to win market support at its target price of around AU$11 ($7.67), but even after it offered to cut the price, investors did not have the appetite.

Trading in Maas Group, one of Firmus' shareholders, was halted Friday after the stock dropped 27% in two days. Maas Group has a 3.2% stake in the company as well as outstanding contracts with Firmus worth AU$727 million ($507 million).

Related: Nvidia’s $500B AI Infrastructure Bet Raises Power Stakes

Two days earlier, Firmus had been dumped by CDC Data Centers from their joint AI infrastructure project in Australia after CDC had become troubled by Firmus’ southeast Asian expansion, which had not been a part of the original partnership.

PLDT delays IPO to 2027

Firmus' wasn't the only IPO to go south this week. Philippine telco PLDT put its data center REIT listing on hold until 2027, blaming the decision on higher interest rates. The REIT, Vitro, was expected to generate as much as 24.2 billion Philippine pesos (US$385.1 million) on the Manila bourse.

PLDT said in an exchange filing it had decided to delay the IPO until 2027 due to "current market conditions and rising interest rates." But it said it was committed to the IPO as an important part of its asset monetization and deleveraging plans.

Original · Data Center Knowledge

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Firmus and PLDT pulled data center IPOs this week while governments pressed pause on development in the latest hurdles to Asia’s data center boom.

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Power & Sites · United States

Bitdeer expands Soluna mining agreement to 35MW

Credited to Data Center Dynamics · datacenterdynamics.com · 20h ago

Photograph · Data Center Dynamics

Cryptocurrency mining and AI cloud firm Bitdeer has agreed to expand its Bitcoin mining deployment at Soluna’s Project Kati 1 in Texas from 28MW to 35MW.

Under the amended agreement, Dory Creek LLC, a wholly owned Bitdeer subsidiary, will deploy approximately 7MW of additional mining equipment. Soluna expects the expanded deployment to provide approximately 2.42 exahashes per second (EHps) of hash rate and be completed in November 2026.

Project Kati 1 is an 83MW wind-powered data center in Willacy County, South Texas. Bitdeer’s deployment is located in the K1BC phase, which Soluna said is now fully subscribed.

The agreement uses a co-mining structure. Soluna supplies the site, electricity, and operations, while Bitdeer provides and owns its Sealminer A2 Pro Air mining machines. The companies share the mining proceeds generated by the deployment.

“We entered our first co-mining agreement with Bitdeer in August, and we are expanding it before that deployment is even finished,” said John Belizaire, CEO of Soluna.

The original agreement, announced on August 25, covered approximately 28MW of equipment with an expected hash rate of 1.93 EHps. Deployment was scheduled to begin in September and ramp up in batches.

Soluna subsequently announced on September 8 that it had energized Kati 1’s final 14MW, completing the 83MW facility. The company said the milestone brought its total operating capacity to approximately 206MW. Kati 1A, the site’s 48MW section serving Galaxy Digital, was completed on April 1.

As DCD previously reported, the Kati campus receives power from the 273MW Las Majadas wind farm, co-owned by EDF Renewables and Masdar. The power purchase agreement provides for electricity to be supplied directly to the campus behind the meter.

Soluna is also developing AI and high-performance computing capacity at Project Kati 2 with Metrobloks. DCD covered the partners’ initial plans in January, with Soluna subsequently confirming that a definitive joint venture agreement was signed on June 3.

DCD reported earlier today that Bitdeer had agreed to a ten-year lease for the A901 data center, a 67MW campus in Malaysia. The exact location and operator of the data center have not been provided.