Three multibillion-dollar data centers are being built in Mississippi.

People are concerned about pollution and electric bill increases that have been seen in data center hot spots around the country.

Entergy is providing power to two of the centers, Amazon Web Services in Madison County and AVAIO in Rankin County. Haley Fisackerly, the CEO of Entergy Mississippi, sat down for an interview with Mississippi Today to address some of these concerns.

The interview was conducted Sept. 9 and has been edited for clarity and length.

Mississippi Today: The main question we’ve been getting is about electricity rates. Are people’s electricity rates going to go up because of the data centers? You’ve said they won’t, but in other states they really have. Can you explain?

Haley Fisackerly: I appreciate the question because it actually is going to have an opposite effect on our customers. 

Growth is important because if you can improve your sales or your customer base, you have a greater base to spread your costs.

Our dilemma about a decade ago was that Mississippi was not growing. Our sister companies in Texas and Louisiana have seen significant growth. 

READ MORE: Brandon residents want answers, guarantees about data center

We recognized that we weren’t growing, the cost of services were driving up and we needed to invest heavily to improve reliability.  We especially have seen that post-COVID with supply chain challenges, inflation, and add to it now, tariffs. We had aging infrastructure, power plants that needed to be replaced, and we, the consumer, use electricity differently. So that means more investment.

When we had to make these investments, we saw our rates escalating dramatically. And we said, “We’ve got to do something about this now.” We do what we can to manage our costs, but we needed to really move that denominator. 

We looked at ways that we could find transformative growth. About eight years ago, somebody said data centers. This data center idea could bring new revenue into the business that would allow us to reinvest. 

We worked with the Mississippi Development Authority and the state to make the state more attractive for data centers. We talked to local counties to see who would have sites and during this time frame we started to impress Amazon Web Services. They saw a state that was really working to try to break down hurdles. Finally, in late 2022, early 2023, they threw out an opportunity, and that’s what brought AWS here. We are now able to bring in a large customer that is bringing in the volume we need. 

After that announcement, other data centers started looking at places in Mississippi and across the South. Most of the data center activity had really centered around northern Virginia, Ohio, Phoenix. Areas in the South were not, from a large-scale perspective, really looked at. There is available capacity, land, and you don’t have the population constraints they’re running into in the northern Virginia area.

Secondly, how do I know we’re protecting customers? We’re regulated by the Mississippi Public Service Commission, and we are required to make sure that any incremental cost by a large customer like that, they are covered by that customer and provide benefits to other customers.

Take AWS and AVAIO. We knew we were going to have to build two new power plants in the early 2030 timeframe. These are expensive. Because of AWS and AVEO coming in, we’re building new power plants and they’re going to be paying a majority of the cost. 

MT: Can I just jump in really quick with a clarifying question? You would have needed to build a new power plant regardless of whether a new data center was going to come in because of the aging infrastructure?

Fisackerly: It was aging. For example, the first plant we’re building is up in the Mississippi Delta.

We’re retiring a plant in Greenville that was built in the late 1950s. The new plant is a natural gas plant, too, but it uses 90% less water and is 50% more energy efficient. You can use less natural gas and get more output. It will be capable of burning hydrogen, which is a cleaner fuel, if and when hydrogen ever becomes economical, and capturing carbon. We are working on a second plant, too, and we’ll probably be eventually looking at additional ones. 

In addition to that, AWS said they wanted renewables. We’re deploying 650 megawatts of renewables that will be connected to the grid, that AWS is paying the incremental cost for.

When electricity flows, it’d be no different than when I pour water on this table. It’s going to flow in the path of least resistance. We put power onto the electrical grid and it serves all customers.

If AWS and AVAIO become larger customers, they’re going to pay a larger percentage. We need to build substations, upgrade transmission lines, and they’re having to pay for those costs. But the other customers are going to benefit from it because you’re improving import capabilities and making it more robust and resilient. We’re getting a better grid at a lesser cost. 

When power moves from a power plant it’s dispatched onto a transmission line then it’s moved to a substation and that voltage is downgraded through a substation to a lower voltage and put on distribution lines to serve customers. In the case of a large customer like this, they will only be transmission served. Power is going to move from the plants on the transmission lines to substations that they will own and pay for at the site. Other customers don’t have to pay for those. 

MT: But data centers just use a large amount of electricity. The supply that you need then is bigger than what you would’ve needed if it was just going to be residential. Doesn’t that increase the cost? 

Fisackerly: It increases the cost because you’re investing more. But because they’re using a larger percentage of it, just through that alone means they’re covering their cost. 

But those plants are there to serve everybody. Say they use X percentage of that plant. They pay their fair share of that percentage. Other customers are not having to pick that up. Plus, the data centers are having to pay certain premiums above that, too, to have the power available when they need it —  the premium, such as the renewables they want. So as we look at carbon capture, they’ll have to pay those incremental costs. We’ll get the benefits of the clean outputs, but they are paying those incremental costs.

MT: Data centers run 24/7. I’ve heard that they use diesel as backup, and they have a capacity on the AWS site. 

Fisackerly: That’s what AWS is doing. I’m not sure what AVAIO’s plans are. But they have backup in case there’s an emergency. They’re limited on how often they can run those under environmental requirements, but yes, that’s correct. 

MT: There’s been some concern in Mississippi because of what’s happening in Memphis with xAI putting up the unregulated turbines that they have. Do you have any concerns that AWS might do something similar?

Fisackerly: No, I do not. First of all, if you look where they’re building, they’re very isolated. They’re leaving a lot of woods around there on purpose, to hide and buffer it. Those backup generators will not run that often. They’re there in the rare event, a major storm. 

Keep in mind they’re not going to be served by the distribution system. The transmission system serves them. We rarely see disruptions on the transmission system because they’re larger wires with larger rights of way, whereas distribution lines are smaller wires running down streets and through neighborhoods. So that lessens a data center’s exposure, too. 

We’re a part of a market called the midContinent Independent System Operator. It’s a regional transmission organization where utilities dispatch all their power into that pool. If you ever had a situation like during the summer that transmission lines were lost, or a power plant went down, then we have certain reserve margins. If we got to a capacity shortfall, the data centers would be curtailed and they would probably run their backup generators. But those are usually very short-term periods. 

MT: Going to go back to the rates: I saw a video on social media over the weekend where someone said they had talked with (Public Service) Commissioner Stamps, and that he said rates were likely going to go up.

Fisackerly: First of all, rates were already going up. The investments were going up. Inflation is driving all of our materials up. Natural gas costs have been higher. Now those are dollar-for-dollar patch throughs that we don’t make profits off of. But that trajectory we were showing is being lowered. So there’s still going to be rates going up.  Everybody’s rates are going up. 

We have a large buyer who’s going to help contribute toward the cost of the grid that benefits all customers. We were hoping to bring in a big, transformative customer that’s going to help reduce cost. Rates are not going to be as high as they otherwise would’ve been. I can’t promise you they won’t go up. But the trajectory has drastically changed. 

In the legislation that approved the AWS deal, there are protections that mean AWS is required to pay the incremental cost to serve and provide benefits to customers. When we started talking to AWS the governor said, “This cannot harm other customers.”

Everybody was like, we’ve got to do this in a way that it benefits customers. And that’s what we did. We also learned from the other states that went before us. 

MT: Yes, they’ve had lots of issues.

Fisackerly: And no doubt that’s happened in other states. But the regulatory process here in Mississippi, especially in our experience with the Mississippi Public Service Commission, they’ve always been supportive of economic development, but they have also had strict requirements. You could go to other states where their policies may be different. 

There are some areas where they’ll say, we’re fine with you pushing costs onto customers to attract jobs and industry here. Mississippi’s taken a different approach. We want to be aggressive, we want to attract it, but we do not want you harming other customers. 

MT: There’s been a lot of reporting from Virginia and Georgia about rate increases there. What are some of the lessons that you took away from other states? 

Fisackerly: If you take northern Virginia and other areas where the most data centers were initially built, AI wasn’t really on the table. They were doing data storage. They would put a facility here and another one 5 to 50 miles over there. Machine learning comes in and the capacity they need is much greater. Now, at least from AWS’s point of view, they want to find land that’s isolated and outside of towns where they can get a campus and grow on that campus and quit being scattered. That reduces their cost to serve.

We sat down with the customer and said, look, if we’re going to do this, you’re going to have to front the cost to protect other customers, such as specific materials that were required. There are long lead times, it’s over a year in advance to get transformers.

AWS stepped up to pay the cost on those. And so that protects customers.

We learned lessons from other utilities. AWS and AVAIO have not served under traditional filed tariffs we have with the commission. Each one of them has a very specific contract. The contract protects the customers and the company by one long-term contract, termination fees and lots of balances up front. They have to put dollars up front to cover certain costs. Those things insulate and protect other customers. 

MT: I was looking at the timelines and read online that the new power plants would be completed in 2029, but the data centers were going to be done by 2027. What does that mean for consumers?

Fisackerly: First of all, they’re slowly ramping up so they don’t all slow it up. We will finish the Delta Blues Plant in the summer of 2028. And the second plant will be at the end of 2028. Plus, at the time when we negotiated them, we had excess. We always try to stay it along if power plants ever go down. You want to be able to grow with that. We’re ramping with them, AWS will phase in over time. AVAIO will also phase in. 

Also to protect customers, we can curtail that energy if there’s ever a demand on the grid and things of that nature. We can work with them to reduce our load, to help manage us through any type of load crunches or things of that nature. 

MT: It feels like everybody is looking at bringing in a data center. When you decided to build these two new plants, did you take into account that there was potentially going to be more? 

Fisackerly: You always want to try to plan for growth and have capacity for growth. We also have to have capacity, what we call operating reserves. You didn’t wake up this morning and put your order in for electricity, did you? 

MT: No. I appreciate not having to do that. 

Fisackerly: But I have to make sure the power’s there. For industrial customers we know exactly what they need every day. A residential customer, I don’t know what time you’re getting up, what time you’re turning on the coffee maker, what time you’re coming home. So we use data to make sure we have enough reserves capacity to manage through load swings.

When we do our supply plans, we plan to meet both what our needs are, what our reserves are that are needed to do that, and try to plan for growth. 

What is happening right now across the entire United States is not just data centers, we’ve got electrification and AI going on. An AI search uses 10 times more electricity than a normal search and more companies have deployed some sort of AI product. 

Every three years, we’re required to file our supply plans with the Mississippi Public Service Commission. It gives transparency to our regulators on the status of all our power plants, what we project our load growth to be and what we need in the future.

When we file these plans, we’re also saying here’s what we think our load forecasts are going to be and what we need to supply for. There’s a lot of planning around that.

MT: There was some controversy previously about changes (approved by the Legislature) to the Public Service Commission’s oversight. Could you give me some context for what was going on?

Fisackerly: AWS is a provider of data centers and AI to other customers whereas Meta and Google are doing it for their own use. 

A lot of your Fortune 500 companies have had a huge spike in demand for data centers and AI. They were quickly trying to find where they could go to meet the demand.

They needed to find a partner and a state where they could build and ramp these data centers up over three years. The traditional process here in Mississippi would have taken five to six years. We wouldn’t want this. We need to find some growth to come in to help Mississippi grow and all that.

So we sat down with the governor, the Public Service Commission, and leaders of the Legislature and said, “If we want to do this, what do we need to do?”

So the governor and the Legislature said, “We’ll pass legislation that one has to approve the incentives they’re providing for AWS, but also that would give approval to Entergy for the assets they would have to build and deploy to serve them.”

That process would’ve taken five to six years. Most of that would’ve been on the front end where we would have to go to the commission and seek something called a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity, a CCN. That basically says, “We’re going to need to make these investments because of this reason.” And that is a review process during which they agree to say, “OK, the Legislature who has authority over the commission who makes it, says, ‘We’re going to go ahead and grant that CCN.’” 

We reduced that on the front end. So that allowed us to accelerate that. 

There’s a perception that you circumvented oversight. We did not. If anything, I’m taking greater risk because now every one of those assets we build the transmission lines, substations and the power plants. Each one of them individually has to go in front of the commission for a prudency review. That review can come back and say these costs weren’t prudent. And if that’s found, we have to eat it. And that makes me a little nervous now because of that. 

We’re doing a lot of work on the front end, we have a lot of oversight. We use teams to negotiate the best contracts and the best pricing on materials, and the Legislature requires that the Public Service Commission hire an independent third party to audit it.

So it is true, it accelerated the front end of the process. But those things have to be reviewed and prudent and then put into rates have not been circumvented. If anything, I don’t have the assurances of that.

It just holds us more accountable to make sure as we build these things, we’re pricing on the best we can and we’re executing the best we can and covering our risks.

MT: I think there’s a lot of skepticism about what the benefits to a community will be from having a data center.

Fisackerly: Here’s where the benefits come. First, take Mississippi. We’re probably one of the most rural, most poor states in the nation, and we don’t see a lot of growth.

AWS committed to the state a minimum $10-billion investment and a minimum of 1,000 jobs. Based on those minimum numbers, that is going to be an estimated $80 million a year in ad valorem taxes to Madison County every year. 

Think about what that is going to allow them to do for aging infrastructure. We know that all these counties and cities are dealing with water, infrastructure, sewer and road issues. They now have incremental funding. Think about what they can bond with that.

In Mississippi, nearly half of the ad valorem taxes have to go to the local school districts. That excites me. Think of how we’re going to change young people’s lives.

While a lot of people debate if data centers create a lot of jobs, they still create higher paying jobs. We have brought a new sector to Mississippi. I hope it helps to calm down some of the brain drain we lose because we create opportunities. There is going to be some ripple effect, not the type of ripple effect you would see around a manufacturing facility. 

But what we have seen happen in Mississippi just since this: ABB, located in Tate County, is expanding. They make electrical components used not only at AWS or AVAIO but data centers around the world. Modine in Grenada County just announced a major expansion. They make the coal coils that are used in the cooling systems. They’re expanding because of that, creating more economic investment jobs going into those areas. 

We’re building a power plant in Washington County at $1.2 billion, and we’re going to pay ad valorem taxes to Washington County. It is the largest economic development project in the Mississippi Delta’s history. We will be building solar facilities in Bolivar, DeSoto and Tallahatchie counties. And the other one I think is in Washington County. That’s again bringing more ad valorem taxes and more jobs.

These things would not have happened without AWS. I think it’s going to bring huge benefits. And as a lifelong Mississippian who is invested here, grew up here, I’m excited to finally see Mississippi getting a part of something that a lot of other states haven’t gotten.

It is going to transform communities and young people’s lives, and that’s what I’m excited about. 

MT: I was talking with an engineer from Houston working on the Amazon data center. He comes in for two weeks and he flies out. I’m curious about the ability to attract talent to Mississippi. 

Fisackerly: We saw a similar thing when Nissan first came in. For the first year or two you could drive through that parking lot and see tags from other counties and even Alabama. You go drive through that parking lot, you’re going to see a lot more Mississippi tags and a lot more counties right here in the area.

So that will happen. Those data centers will probably bring in certain talent to train individuals. 

We recruited Continental, we recruited Nissan, we’ve recruited Milwaukee Tools. I’ve never seen a company like AWS, who’s come in and put dollars into the community colleges. They’re doing fiber optic and electrical technician training. 

But most of the jobs they’re going to need, there are technical technician-type jobs. They’re going to need some engineers, they’re going to need some management. If you look at it, 80% of the jobs we need now in the systems don’t require a four-year degree. They need technical training and they’re going to be high-paying jobs. They’re doing a lot of outreach to schools. 

It’s not going to happen overnight. There may be some dislocation because they’ve got to get facilities running. But I guarantee you any facility, we’ve looked and recruited here over time, they will grow it. And they’re incentivized, too by the benefits that the state provided them. And as a large employer myself, too, I want my people living and working in that area. Can’t force you to, but at the end of the day, once I have a choice and when I’m interviewing, that will be a factor. 

MT: One of the things that’s come up when I have talked with residents is that they are very concerned about the environmental impact of both the data centers and the increase in power that they’re going to need. I’m curious, what’s your response to that? 

Fisackerly: Let’s take the water issue. The state of Mississippi as part of the deal made a $215 million loan to Madison County. And you want to verify this with Madison County. I’m not the best one to talk about it, but my understanding is that it is to go support the infrastructure improvements, one of which is the wastewater treatment facility in northern Madison County that was under review by the EPA. The money that the state is floating through a loan to Madison County will go to enhance that facility and build a pipeline to Amazon where they will take the wastewater and treat it and run it through their facilities and recapture it and not tap the water supply there.

Two, the technology is changing quickly. The new chips that are coming out are using new ways of cooling. And, a reason why they also are so energy dependent is that those buildings are cooled, too. AWS will, based on the season, will also reduce their water demands based on when it’s easier to cool the building. 

They’re probably one of the most sustainable companies I’ve ever dealt with. They want clean energy to the point of what they’re doing there to do that loan is it will be paid back by AWS the fee in lieu of tax that they’re paying back to Madison County that then pays the state back. I’ve never seen that before. A lot of times when you’re recruiting industry here, it is, “Give me all the incentives you got and we’ll give it back to you through jobs and taxpayers or a tax ad valorem.”

They’re actually paying that loan back. And so that’s a huge benefit there. The AVAIO project is a much smaller project compared to AWS, but they even use a sustainability project. They’re capturing rain water. 

Part of our research was, “Let’s go see these data centers being built.” And what I saw being built out west and up in northern Virginia five, six, seven years ago compared to what’s being built today. These are very robust concrete buildings. The concrete dampens a lot of sound and makes them more energy efficient. So lots of things that go into it are very different.

 Even the aesthetics around it, they are really focused on how they’re seen from the road. The one up at Madison, that is an industrial complex. You look at the one in Ridgeland though, they’re purposely keeping a tree buffer all the way around that property. And hiding it. 

If you think about it, the state of Mississippi didn’t give anything up because we weren’t getting it anyway. What we got was a large capital customer coming to the state, making large capital investment, bringing large ad valorem taxes and jobs. 

MT: You probably can’t answer this one but I’ve heard that there’s another one coming to Madison. Do you know anything about that? 

Fisackerly: First of all, I can’t comment on any projects. I’m under NDAs. I’ll tell you this. We’re very busy. There are a lot of projects. And they will come as long as they pay the incremental costs and protect other customers. 

The way I look at it is we have four stakeholders. We have our customers, our employees, our communities and our owners. At the end of the day when it provides value to all four, then you do it. The moment one of those are harmed, you don’t do it. 

You have your big players but the interesting thing is there’s these other companies, and they call all the time. Our teams are overwhelmed with them. Some of ’em turn out legit like AVAIO did. And you have to weed through those.

Every one of our counties have economic development arms who are trying to recruit these things. We have to work with the data center companies, but we also have to have the counties see that, this one’s not really going to benefit you. It’s going to create more harm. So we try to work through that. Can’t serve ’em all, but we’ll do the ones that provide that value.