--- title: "Ratepayer: what it means · The AI Compute Race · DRYBURGH" source: https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/ratepayer description: "Ratepayer: A customer who pays a utility's rates. At Hyperion, if the customer leaves early, part of the plants' cost falls on Entergy's other ratepayers." --- # Ratepayer What does “Ratepayer” mean? RatepayerA customer who pays a utility’s rates. At Hyperion, if the customer leaves early, part of the plants’ cost falls on Entergy’s other ratepayers. *Chapter 6.* From *The AI Compute Race*. [Read the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#buy) ## Where the book uses it - [Chapter 6 — Firm, Around-the-Clock](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes/chapter-6)Where the electricity comes from: grid queues, transformers, turbines and the firm power a datacenter needs every hour of the year, on calendars the buildout does not control. ## Sources that use it - H.R. 9340, 119th Congress, the Ratepayer Protection Act, as passed by the House of Representatives on 16 September 2026, and the Clerk of the House, Roll Call 312 (the vote, on a motion to suspend the rules and pass the bill as amended, two-thirds required: 417 yeas, 3 nays, 12 not voting; the standard the bill adds to section 111(d) of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978, that a rate for a large-load customer “shall be designed to recover from the large-load customer the full, incremental cost of any generation, transmission, or distribution upgrade necessary to serve the load of such large-load customer”; a large-load customer is one contracting on or after enactment for facilities that “require electric energy primarily to operate information technology infrastructure and related systems pertaining to data storage and computational applications and services” and “have, in the aggregate, a peak electric demand of 100 megawatts or more at a single site or campus”; each state regulatory authority “shall complete the consideration and make the determination” within two years of enactment; the Congressional Research Service summary: the bill “requires state utility regulators and nonregulated utilities to consider implementing” the standard; the bill read in its engrossed text and the vote in the Clerk’s record, Senate action in the bill’s congress.gov record). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/filing#hr9340-ratepayer-sep26) - Microsoft Corporation, “Protest and Motion for Hearing and Settlement Judge Procedures of Microsoft Corporation,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Docket No. ER26-3265-000, American Transmission Company LLC and Midcontinent Independent System Operator, Inc., filed 21 August 2026, eLibrary accession 20260821-5282 (the Agreements protested are the four amended Large Load Project Commitment Agreements and the Minimum Transmission Charge Agreement that American Transmission Company filed to serve Microsoft’s “datacenter campus in Racine County, Wisconsin”, negotiated with its affiliate Wisconsin Electric Power Company, doing business as We Energies; they “raise several significant cost-of-service and open access issues that support a Commission finding that the Agreements may not be just and reasonable”; Microsoft, “as a signatory to the White House’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge, is fully committed to ‘pay for all new power delivery infrastructure upgrades required to service [its] data centers, including adequate network upgrade costs to ensure that these expenses are not passed on to the ordinary household.’”, the pledge’s words; “The MTCA provides no mechanism to prevent WEPCo’s retail customers from paying the costs of the facilities, and large load customers may pay twice”; the protest read whole as filed). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/filing#msft-ferc-protest-aug26) - Office of Governor Ron DeSantis, “Governor Ron DeSantis Announces Proposal for Citizen Bill of Rights for Artificial Intelligence,” a release datelined The Villages, Florida, 4 December 2025 (among its proposals on hyperscale datacenters: “Protect Ratepayers—Prohibit utilities from charging Florida residents more to support hyperscale data center development, including electric, gas, and water utilities”; “Protect Taxpayers—No taxpayer subsidies for Big Tech”; “Protect Local Control—Allows local government to prohibit data center construction/development”; a proposal for the legislature, not a law). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/filing#desantis-ai-bor-dec25) - Proclamation 11014 of 4 March 2026, “Ratepayer Protection Pledge,” 91 Federal Register 11439, published 9 March 2026 (the operative clause: “On this day, March 4, 2026, seven leading technology companies have accepted the terms of the Ratepayer Protection Pledge” — the proclamation names none of them; the commitments as the preamble states them: the signatories “will build, bring, or buy the new generation resources and electricity needed to satisfy their energy demands, and pay for all new power delivery infrastructure upgrades to service their data centers,” will “voluntarily negotiate new, separate rate structures with their utilities and relevant State governments, and pay those rates, and for their infrastructure, whether they use the electricity or not,” and “will also invest in local communities and coordinate with grid operators to contribute to a more reliable grid”). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/filing#proc-11014) - The White House, “President Trump’s Ratepayer Protection Pledge Secures American AI Dominance, Protects Consumers,” 23 July 2026 (more than 200 additional entities joined, representing organizations delivering approximately 80% of US electricity and serving 263 million customers). [In the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources/filing#yahoo-pledge) And 2 more: [search the Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources). ## Related terms - [Hyperion](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/hyperion) - [Backstop](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/backstop) - [Batch Zero](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/batch-zero) - [Behind the meter](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/behind-the-meter) - [Beignet](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/beignet) - [Bridge power](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/bridge-power) - [Capacity auction](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/capacity-auction) - [Combined-cycle](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/combined-cycle) - [Curtailment](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/curtailment) - [Demand response](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/demand-response) - [Early-termination fee](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/early-termination-fee) - [ERCOT](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/ercot) From the glossary of The AI Compute Race. - [Campuses](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/ledger) - [Tests](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/tests) - [Scorecard](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/scorecard) - [Data](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/data/releases) - [Chapter by chapter](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/companion) - [The record at a glance](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/observatory) - [The machine](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/machine) - [One campus, four futures](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/hyperion) - [Glossary](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary) - [People](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/people) - [Sources](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/sources) - [Notes](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/notes) - [Where the book was wrong](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/corrections) - [Where its sources were wrong](https://dryburgh.com/corrections?book=vol1) - [The Paper](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/paper) - [Consent](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/consent) - [Who builds and pays](https://dryburgh.com/vol1/parties) *The AI Compute Race: Five Races, One Machine* is a book by Lee S. Dryburgh, the first volume of THE COMPUTE ECONOMY, published by Dryburgh, an imprint of Contestra OÜ, Tallinn, Estonia; its record closes on 8 November 2026. [About the book](https://dryburgh.com/vol1)[Tell me when it is out](https://dryburgh.com/vol1#notify)