One question for Louisville's utility before August

Every monopoly utility tariff carries a quiet default: when a new industrial load forces grid buildout, the costs spread across the residential rate base unless the tariff explicitly assigns them to the load. The default is not a conspiracy; it is the path of least resistance in cost-of-service ratemaking, where shared infrastructure is funded by shared bills.

Rep. Morgan McGarvey's Thursday letter to Louisville Gas and Electric and Kentucky Utilities President John Crockett is the cleanest recent test of that default. A 1.6 million-square-foot Camp Ground Road data center has been approved for West Louisville. McGarvey is asking the utility, on the record, who pays for the power infrastructure behind it — and whether the facility could get priority over existing ratepayers during extreme heat or severe weather.

The answer will not live in the press release. It will live in Kentucky Public Service Commission docket 2025-00114, in the tariff line items that determine whether a hyperscale load is charged by causation or absorbed by the base. McGarvey's deadline is the end of August. LG&E and KU say they have put customer protections in place; the question is whether those protections are line items or talking points.

Call it the socialization default. Every new megawatt of AI demand is a quiet referendum on who funds the grid that carries it — and the ratepayers rarely get to vote before the bill arrives.