TALLAHASSEE, Florida — Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Thursday that would put new requirements on large data centers in Florida, a move he said would protect ratepayers from “footing the bill” for data center development.
Under the bill, public utilities must require data centers to pay their own service costs and prevent those costs from being shifted to ratepayers. The bill targets data centers and other large load customers that have an anticipated monthly peak load of 50 megawatts or more.
DeSantis, who has cemented himself as a sharp critic of artificial intelligence, acknowledged widespread concerns that data centers guzzle water and can raise electricity prices at a press conference at Florida Polytechnic University in Lakeland.
“You should not pay one more red cent for electricity because of a hyperscale data center as an individual,” he said. “That’s just not right, for the most wealthy companies in the history of the world to come in and have individual Floridians or Americans subsidize these hyperscale data centers.”
