The growing free-market push to let data centers go off grid

"“I’ve been playing around with the idea of what a free market in electricity would look like. Could we get there by reforming the current system? I think the answer is probably no,” Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, told Latitude Media. “We need brand new networks.”

With the need to get significant amounts of power to new data centers, the concept has begun to gain traction with policymakers. Earlier this month, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) proposed a bill that would exempt self-contained power islands from the Federal Power Act, which governs wholesale electricity markets and transmission planning. 

At the state level, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R) signed a similar law last year that waived state PUC oversight of such electricity providers, but still subjected them to state environmental, health, and safety permitting laws. Meanwhile, members of the American Legislative Exchange Council — an influential engine of modeling bills for conservative state lawmakers — approved their own version."

https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/the-growing-free-market-push-to-let-data-centers-go-off-grid/