The Luther Board of Trustees was notified at Tuesday’s regular monthly meeting to be on the lookout for a potential application for a data center to be submitted near the OGE Red Bud Plant. “I would be surprised if you didn’t see some sort of application for a Specific Use Permit as well as an economic devolopment agreement coming up after the first of the year,” said Beth Anne Childs, town attorney during her monthly “attorney report” on the agenda. (Editing to clarify: There were no action agenda items related to the data center. The comments were part of monthly update reports.)

She said she had been in contact with Beltline Energy which has retained legal counsel with a metro law firm that focuses on zoning work issues. “As soon as that information is provided, I will send it to you, and then we’ll also make that public so that everyone has a very clear picture as to what they’re proposing, if they elect to move forward. I have received inquiries about it and the law firm sent an email to the town manager, and so I’m keeping that on everyone’s radar.”

Later in the meeting, Mayor Terry Arps acknowledged a citizen, wearing a No AI Data Center shirt,  who passed out copies of an online post on the subject. “I am aware of potential negative impacts this could have and will look into whether it’s possible to mitigate some of them or if it is possible to make them more tolerable,” he said. “I know that if this moves forward, and that decision isn’t mine, it has to do with the people looking into the possibility of a data center, then there will be public meetings, probably more than one, on this issue, and I’m sure that we’ll have just a gay old time at those meetings.”

His comment drew light laughter, intended as a nod to the issue’s intensity since it was first presented in May 2025. Questions about electricity bills, water usage, property values, and longevity are part of the concerns for neighbors. Others see the data center as an economic opportunity for the town to increase annual revenue by millions of dollars (up to $12 million some have said) that could address longstanding funding issues through franchise fees to use OGE’s power.  

Will “Behind the Meter” cost Luther?

However, some are asking whether a new Oklahoma law authored by Sen. Grant Green who represents much of Luther could potentially nullify those franchise payments. His “Behind the Meter” law allows companies to generate their own power. While Beltline claimed in May it would use OGE’s power, Beltline’s primary business is solar power, and the potential Luther project is part of their entry into the trendy data center market. 

Transource Added to the Watch List

Meanwhile, a related issue has surfaced that also has some Luther residents concerned. It’s a high-powered transmission line proposed by Transource Energy to run between Piedmont to the Red Bud plant in Luther, requiring land acquisition in the (unpublished) path. Public meetings were held this week on the project.

There are many resources on the issue including the article below from The Frontier, used under a creative commons republishing offer. Other resources include: Rope Report and podcast, Oklahoma Energy Today, Luther Citizen Watch (FB), Save Oklahoma Farms and Ranches (FB), and Luther Register News.

All notices of public hearings, meetings, and additional information on the data center proposal will be covered by Luther Register News and also on the town’s website where you can also sign up for email notifications from the town.

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Oklahoma’s data center boom is about to hit the grid — and your power bill

by Clifton Adcock, The Frontier
December 11, 2025

Help us report on data centers: The Frontier is reporting on data centers in Oklahoma. But details about most projects are kept in the dark. If you know of a data center coming to your community, or if you have thoughts or information on data centers in Oklahoma, please fill out our form.

Big tech companies have plans to build more than a dozen data centers in Oklahoma to keep up with increased computing needs from artificial intelligence. Some will require enough electricity to power entire cities. Oklahoma’s two largest utility companies are investing more than a billion dollars in new sources of power to keep up with demand and plan to pass on some of the cost to residential customers.

The Frontier found at least 18 data center projects in the state that are either now under construction or awaiting government approvals. The newsroom used public announcements, land records, meeting agendas and air permit applications to compile that count.

The state’s two largest utilities, Oklahoma Gas and Electric and Public Service Company of Oklahoma, have said in regulatory filings that new demand from data centers and other industries will require more power than they can now produce. The utilities are already looking to pass the cost of new transmission lines and power generation on to all customers, including residential users. Though power prices are lower compared to the nation at large, Oklahoma residential customers already pay some of the highest prices for electricity in the region, second behind Texas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The average per-kilowatt hour price for Oklahoma residents was up 7% in September from the same time the previous year. 

John Laws, Gov. Kevin Stitt’s former secretary of budget and now a consultant for OG&E, told state regulators in May that big new users want assurances that OG&E will have enough power to fill their needs before they sign agreements with utilities. Laws noted that these big new users come from a variety of industries, including manufacturing, refineries, the federal government, data centers and cryptocurrency.

“The changes in recent prospective loads are unprecedented, both in the sheer size and the volume of requests,” Laws said.     

A report from the Corporation Commission’s Public Utility Division in June warned that the data center boom could lead utilities to overestimate demand based on speculative proposals and unverified projections. Some data centers could close or never be built, leaving the remaining ratepayers in the state to pay for billions of dollars in new power generation.

Historically, adding new large customers has helped spread fixed costs across a broader base, supporting affordability for all customers, said Matt Rahn, a spokesperson for PSO.

“Our commitment is to protect our existing customers by ensuring new customers, including data centers, pay their fair share or contribution to the costs their load on the system creates,” Rahn said. “We’re also evaluating a large energy use tariff to further ensure prices reflect the cost to serve each customer group, keeping rates fair and balanced for all.”

Ken Miller, vice president of public and regulatory affairs for OG&E, said the company is building protections for existing customers into its new large load contracts and working to develop a new tariff for larger customers.

 “The need is just tremendous,” Miller said. “As you see, not just here in Oklahoma, but the country and world, the world is electrifying, and we are all trying to keep up with that increased pace of electrification.”

A few of the proposed data centers in Oklahoma include plans for solar energy facilities to power them, including a set of five data centers planned in Stillwater and at least one of two  proposed Google data centers near Muskogee, land and air permitting records show.

Oklahoma passed a law earlier this year that gives companies more options to buy or generate power on-site. But the law does not require companies to generate their own power.

New state law could add charges to electric bills 

Another new state law, Senate Bill 998, which took effect in August allows utilities to recoup costs from customers to build new natural gas power plants as soon as construction begins.

OG&E lobbied for the new law. The utility believes it will save ratepayers money in the long run as it keeps financing costs from building up over the years, Miller said.

“It’s akin to a mortgage and you’re building a house and paying off the interest early instead of later,” he said. “The savings to customers comes by eliminating the long-term financing of those construction costs.”

But Oklahoma attorney A.J. Singer, who represents the Oklahoma chapter of AARP, says it’s more like an apartment building where current tenants pay more each month so the landlord can build new rental units, while current renters will never see any actual benefit. AARP lobbied against the legislation and believes it will only benefit large, for-profit utility companies, said Joy McGill, AARP’s associate state director of advocacy.

OG&E has already unsuccessfully tried this year to use the new law to charge customers more while it builds two new natural gas power plants as part of a $506.4-million plan to increase generating capacity. OG&E proposed charging customers an average of 55 cents extra per month starting in 2026, which would increase each year to an average $4.41 a month by 2031.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which regulates utilities in the state, rejected OG&E’s cost-recovery plan in November because the new law hadn’t taken effect yet when the company submitted its application. The commission will allow OG&E to recover some of its costs to build the new generators, but only after they are put into service and provide power to customers. The average cost to consumers was not included in the Corporation Commission order.

The commission also ordered OG&E to come up with a plan to create a new tariff on large users like data centers by July 2026, in hopes of defraying future costs for residential customers. Both AARP and the Oklahoma Industrial Energy Consumers group have asked the commission to reconsider its decision to allow OG&E to recover costs from customers, though the commission has yet to rule on that matter.

In its current case before the Corporation Commission, Public Service Company of Oklahoma is also seeking to pass along the costs of building and buying new generation to customers, including in-progress construction costs to build two new natural gas generators. 

PSO said in its application filed in September that it plans to purchase and build more than $1.25 billion in new sources of energy and will seek to recover $539.8 million in construction costs from ratepayers to build new natural gas-fired generators that are part of the expansion plan.

A Corporation Commission administrative law judge is scheduled to hear the case in February.

Singer said AARP will likely oppose the request, but he hopes the Corporation Commission will work to require big industrial users to shoulder more of the cost in the future.

“There needs to be some kind of guarantee from these data centers that if the utility and its ratepayers expend a bunch of funds to build out infrastructure and generation for these extremely large loads, that they’re going to be here in 15, 20, 30 years,” he said.

A shortage of power

Demand for electricity from data centers is expected to triple by 2030, making up around 14% of all power usage in the U.S., according to a recent report by McKinsey & Company. 

Most of the increased demand comes from commercial and industrial customers that are coming on to the grid and “with electric needs far greater than PSO has experienced in the past,” Matthew Horeled, vice president of regulatory and finance for PSO said in testimony before the Corporation Commission.

As of September, PSO had 11 new  “large load” customers under letters of agreement or contract, representing about 779 megawatts, enough energy to power around half a million average homes.

Several industrial parks in PSO’s service area were also in late-stage negotiations with large-load projects, Horeled said.

Unless it acquires new sources of power, PSO will face a 31% power deficit of 3,124 megawatts by 2031, a gap that could power 2 million average Oklahoma homes, according to its application to recover costs from customers.

One new customer that recently signed a preliminary letter of agreement with PSO will eventually need over 1,000 megawatts at any given time, roughly enough to power 666,000 average Oklahoma homes.

OG&E predicts that it too will eventually see a significant generation deficit unless it invests in new sources of power.  By 2035, OG&E projects it will face a shortfall of 3,459 megawatts to meet demand, or about 38% higher than it is capable of generating. 

OG&E is already preparing its next request for proposals to acquire new electrical generation resources, which will require it to bring a new application before the Corporation Commission in order to recover the cost of new generation from customers, a spokesman for the company said. 

This article first appeared on The Frontier and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.