Avista has quietly signed a nonbinding memorandum of understanding that could let a single, unnamed customer start drawing 125 megawatts from the utility as early as 2029, with a path to grow to 500 megawatts by 2032. If it all comes together, that one load would equal roughly half the electricity now used by all homes and businesses in Spokane County and would be big enough to reshape how the regional grid is planned. For now, the company stresses the deal is preliminary, and that final contracts, detailed engineering work and signoffs from regulators are still required.
What Avista disclosed
In a May 29 filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Avista described the arrangement as a nonbinding MOU with a developer seeking system interconnection and energy supply for a large load electric service. According to SEC documents, the customer is asking for an initial 125 megawatts starting in 2029 and a potential expansion to 500 megawatts by 2032. The filing says the parties expect to follow the MOU with an engineering and procurement contract and a formal Energy Services Agreement.
Avista's assurances
Avista spokesman Jared Webley told local reporters the company would not identify the prospective customer and emphasized that the utility’s stated priority is protecting existing customers. As the Spokesman-Review reported, Webley said the deal would be structured so that the new large customer covers the costs tied specifically to serving that load, including new supply, transmission upgrades and other infrastructure, instead of shifting those expenses onto current ratepayers.
Local officials weigh the tradeoffs
County and state leaders responded with cautious interest. Spokane County Commissioner Al French, who earlier this year advocated for a sales tax exemption aimed at attracting big projects, said he had not been briefed on the company but stressed that any newcomer must not harm local ratepayers. Representative Timm Ormsby, a co-sponsor of the unsuccessful January bill that would have given tax breaks to data centers, told reporters he has been in contact with developers pitching next generation data center concepts that would combine wastewater, hydrogen and computing, but that he also does not yet know who Avista’s prospective customer is. The Spokesman-Review reported both officials’ comments.
How this fits into Washington’s broader demand surge
The potential request lands as Washington has become a national hub for power hungry computing facilities. Central Washington’s Quincy Valley alone now hosts dozens of data centers, and a multi year plan launched in 2019 by Grant County PUD to expand transmission capacity was designed to raise delivery into Quincy from about 372 megawatts to roughly 750 megawatts. Reporting on that transmission push notes that major cloud operators have already helped fund upgrades to move more power into the region. For background on that buildout, see coverage by GovTech.
Politics, public opinion and the AI era
The same boom has stirred local fights and added to national skepticism. A Gallup survey released in May found that seven in ten Americans oppose building AI data centers in their local area, with 48% strongly opposed. That political backdrop is something local officials say they are watching closely. For many communities, the debate comes down to whether promised jobs, tax revenue and infrastructure improvements outweigh concerns about water use, noise and the strain on local grids. Gallup provides the national snapshot.
Grid costs and Avista’s planning
Avista’s own investor materials show the company has already mapped out a multibillion dollar capital plan over the next several years and has modeled potential extra spending to integrate a very large load. As outlined in Avista’s May investor outreach material, the utility has signaled $3.4 billion in planned capital spending through 2030 and has noted a hypothetical additional integration spend in the low hundreds of millions of dollars for a large load customer. Those figures are summarized in materials reported by MarketScreener.
Legal and regulatory process
Any final Energy Services Agreement will need to be filed with and approved by the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, the SEC filing notes. That means engineering studies, required upgrades and reliability protections all have to be completed before service begins. The WUTC review will create a public record and timeline, and it is the venue where questions about cost allocation and consumer protections are most likely to be argued in the open. The May 29 SEC filing outlines those next procedural steps.
What’s next
Avista and the unnamed developer still face a long list of technical, permitting and regulatory milestones before anything is built or energized. Company officials and local leaders say they will be watching the engineering studies and the eventual WUTC docket closely. That public process will determine what protections, if any, are required to make the project viable without shifting costs to existing customers or compromising reliability. For now, the filing marks only a first step in what could turn into one of the region’s largest utility planning challenges in years.
