This week’s announcement by Amazon that they are doubling their investment in Mississippi is good news for everyone in our state.

Amazon’s $11 billion expansion of data center operations in Madison County – and their new $1 billion project in Clinton — will do even more than create 800 new jobs and bring the company’s capital investment in Mississippi to $25 billion.  Entergy Mississippi’s planned grid investments will support Amazon’s expansion while strengthening reliability for customers across the 45 counties we serve. These large projects, among others, also help ensure we can continue delivering reliable, sustainable power and generate at least $2 billion in customer bill savings over the next two decades.

“Generational opportunities like this don’t show up by accident,” said Haley Fisackerly, Entergy Mississippi president and CEO. “I’m deeply proud of the work by our Entergy economic development team, in partnership with Gov. Reeves and other leaders, that helped attract Amazon to Mississippi. Developing strong relationships with Amazon and supporting their need for speed-to-market helped bring them to our state. And showing them we can deliver on our promises is bringing them back for more.”

Amazon’s investments in Madison, Warren and Hinds counties will be far-reaching, creating jobs, fortifying our local economies and supporting our communities. Our partnership with Amazon will also generate big benefits for all our customers. Through our Superpower Mississippi plan, we’ll continue working to strengthen the power grid and improve reliability while keeping customers’ future bills lower than they otherwise would have been.

Superpower Mississippi is the largest and most comprehensive upgrade to the power grid in Entergy Mississippi’s 100-year history. Our goal is to cut future power outages in half. We’re going to invest 50% more in grid improvements to reach that goal without any new costs to customers — thanks in part to investments by Amazon and other companies expanding in Mississippi.

We’re also staying ahead of the growth in energy demand in our state by building modern new power generation resources to replace retiring older power plants. That includes solar power sites in Bolivar, DeSoto, Tallahatchie and Washington counties as well as modern natural gas power plants in Ridgeland, Vicksburg and Greenville.

Because of the power-intensive nature of data center operations, their large contributions to the power grid that everyone shares will provide bill savings for all of our nearly half a million Mississippi customers. We’re determined to continue to keep our rates — which are already below the national average — among the lowest in the nation.

Entergy’s service agreements with data center customers are structured to benefit all customers, while protecting existing customers from risks. That includes prepayment requirements, multiyear contract terms, credit and collateral requirements, and early termination penalties to protect our existing customers.

Entergy Mississippi’s Fair Share Plus guiding principles mean that data centers will pay their fair share for the power they use, plus produce additional savings or benefits for existing customers on the power grid. Those principles include:

• Sufficiently long contract terms for service agreement, to ensure the recovery of adequate revenues from the data center customer to cover the cost of needed power plants and other equipment.
• Strong collateral requirements to ensure the data center customer’s payment obligations are backed by sufficient credit and guarantees from the company that owns the data center.
• A guarantee that rates charged to the data center customer will cover their incremental cost to serve during the contract term and support the cost of the existing power grid we all rely on.
• Aligning the timing of the addition of any new large customer’s energy load with when new power generation becomes available.
• Ensuring that data centers have necessary equipment to protect the grid from any power quality issues that occur due to the size of their electric load.
• Support for clean energy, including nuclear and solar power.
• Strong oversight by the Mississippi Public Service Commission.

The big investments by Amazon and other companies are helping establish Mississippi as a place where high-technology industries can locate and thrive due to our robust infrastructure, business-friendly environment and available talent. Entergy Mississippi stands ready to do our part to keep the good news coming.