The US gov’t is expected to bring together data center firms and utility companies to make a voluntary pledge to ensure that skyrocketing data center power demand does not lead to spiraling electricity costs for regular ratepayers.First reported by Reuters, the event at which the pledge will be announced is expected in the coming weeks. While no names were divulged, it's believed that several major companies will join the pledge.The reports follow the signing of the "Ratepayer Protection Pledge" by some of the largest tech companies earlier this year. Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI signed the voluntary agreement in which they committed to building or buying the immense electricity infrastructure required to power their data centers, in addition to the transmission and distribution infrastructure needed to connect the power to the grid.During the signing ceremony, President Donald Trump said that the pledge would bring utility bills down “very substantially.”Fears have begun to permeate both federal and state legislatures about the impact large loads could and are having on power bills across the country. In some regions, wholesale power costs have jumped by more than 75 percent, leading to higher bills.To combat this, several states have passed or are in the process of passing legislation and regulations requiring large-load data centers to foot the bill for new infrastructure.In May, regulators in Oregon approved a new rate class for data centers and other large loads, which is now in effect.Before this, Oklahoma’s governor, Kevin Stitt, signed into law a new bill aimed at protecting ratepayers in the state from rising utility and infrastructure costs associated with data centers. This closely followed Florida, whose governor signed into law a similar bill that prohibited utilities from passing data center infrastructure costs on to residential and small-business ratepayers and required large-scale users to bear their full cost of service.Other states to see similar rules proposed and passed include Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia, to name a few.DCD explored the issue in depth in our latest magazine. Read for free here.