No blank checks.
Make them pay their own way.
Arizonans are right to be concerned about large computing projects raising utility bills, straining the grid and using scarce water. This site measures every major project in the state against four enforceable conditions, and uses public records to show where the rules already protect families and where they don't yet.
Change in the average residential electricity price, January–June 2026 vs. 2025. A correlation, not proof of cause.
Four conditions. Every project measured against them.
Not voluntary pledges. Each condition is graded on what is written into law, utility tariffs or binding agreements today.
Pay for the power they use
Partly in place- SRP requires new large loads to pay up front for the transmission and substations built to serve them
- APS has proposed a 45%+ rate increase for its extra-high-load customer class, versus about 14% for homes
- No statewide rule yet requires every utility to do the same
Protect families from higher bills
Being tested- SRP bills customers over 20 MW for at least 80% of their forecast demand, whether they use it or not
- Commission staff found Project Blue's power contract shifts no costs to homes; the Attorney General's appeal is pending
- A 2026 law requires utilities to report large-load requests and cost-allocation studies
Protect local water
Gaps remain- Goodyear requires air cooling on Microsoft's newest buildings
- Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa and others cap or review large-volume water users
- Arizona has no statewide water-use reporting requirement for data centers; the Governor's proposed water-use fee was not enacted
Enforceable accountability
Partly in place- New sales-tax exemptions are paused from July 2026 to June 2029
- Certified facilities that miss their investment commitments can lose the tax relief
- Arizona's exemption carries no job or wage requirements, unlike Nevada's and Texas's
When they pay their own way, the public comes out ahead
Estimated yearly state and local tax revenue from projects operating or under construction today, set against what the state gives up. Adjust every assumption in the public ledger.
Trackers disagree. Here's why, and which number we use.
Same buildings, different question
Look it up yourself
What Arizona gets back, and what it gives up
The fair question isn't whether data centers bring investment. It's whether Arizonans come out ahead once every cost is counted. We price both sides in dollars per Arizonan per year: taxes paid by operating projects and their construction on one side; the sales-tax exemption, the water they consume priced at scarcity value, and any grid costs shifted onto households on the other. Every input is adjustable and sourced.
per Arizonan, per year
Where the tax money goes, and what it pays for
The same yearly tax dollars, split by who receives them, then converted into the salaries and benefits of the people those budgets pay for. Without these projects, this is the revenue each level of government would have to replace or do without.
Adjust the assumptions
Direct counts property and income taxes from operating facilities plus contracting tax on construction under way. Full ripple uses the industry-sponsored PwC study's Arizona total ($1.004B, 2024), which adds supplier and household spending.
ADOR: $770.5M of exempt purchases in FY2025, about $38.5M of state tax; we add ~$20M of county and city tax. The FY2027 option uses Grand Canyon Institute's $60M+ state projection plus ~$30M local.
A model assumption meant to price water at scarcity (replacement) value, not the utility rate the operator already pays. Slide it to any value.
Adds water consumed generating the electricity: ~1.0 liter per kWh in Arizona (USGS 2015 thermoelectric withdrawals ÷ EIA 2025 generation). Off by default because every electricity user causes it, and Palo Verde runs on treated wastewater.
Default $0: SRP and APS require large loads to pay for their own grid upgrades, with minimum bills, and Commission staff found no shift to residential customers on Project Blue. The Attorney General disputes that finding; slide to test any amount. Applied to 2.86M households (ACS 2020–24).
The ledger, line by line
How to read it
What companies building in Arizona have committed to
Only commitments tied to Arizona sites, watersheds or grids. Most are voluntary: they count, but they are not the same as the enforceable conditions on the home page, which is why we grade those separately. Water volumes are the companies' own figures and are often projections; multi-funder deals don't disclose any one company's share. Each item links to its source.
Binding utility rules that make large customers pay
Every project in Arizona
Each facility or campus with its status, announced capacity, and estimated taxes and construction work. Estimates follow the Low / Central / High switch; each facility lists its own sources.
Every known Arizona data center
Dot size = announced capacity (MW). Pins marked approximate are placed at cross streets or the city center. Districts are the 2022–2031 legislative map.
Click a dot or a table row for the facility's estimates and sources.
Estimates follow the Low / Central / High switch. Operating facilities: permanent jobs and annual taxes at today's estimated online load (statewide calibration, see Method). Under construction and pipeline: at announced full build. Construction job-years are cumulative over the build.
Construction jobs by trade and union
Who builds a data center, and how much of that work is estimated to be union. Construction job-years are split by each trade's share of craft hours on a data center build, then multiplied by an estimated union share for that trade. Arizona is a right-to-work state where about 5% of construction workers are union; nationally, data center construction is one of the building trades' largest markets, and Project Blue near Tucson is being built under a 100% union project labor agreement.
Jobs and taxes by legislative district
All 30 districts
Direct jobs and taxes are placed in the district where the facility sits. The "ripple jobs" column spreads supplier and household-spending jobs evenly across districts, since Arizona's districts have roughly equal populations and that spending follows where workers live and shop. Pipeline = approved, planned and proposed projects at announced build.
The policy landscape
Arizona bills from the 2025 and 2026 sessions checked against the Legislature's ALIS records, executive action, what municipalities are doing, and the national model bills and state laws Arizona members will be handed in 2027.
Agenda sweep
Data center items on Arizona public-meeting agendas: what's coming up and what just happened. The sweep reads each jurisdiction's agenda portal (Legistar, CivicClerk, PrimeGov, Granicus and others) and checks news coverage of votes.
Coming up
Recently acted
Earlier sweep items
Portals the sweep watches
Power and water, compared with our neighbors
Arizona against Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado and the U.S. average, plus the utility load picture, the rate evidence both sides cite, and every open Corporation Commission docket touching data centers.
Arizona's grid right now
Loading live data…
Hourly demand, last 48 hours
What's generating (latest EIA hour)
Busiest tie points, last 5 minutes
What you're looking at
Lines are every 230, 345 and 500 kV transmission line in and around Arizona from the federal HIFLD dataset (last updated 2023, so lines energized since, such as Ten West Link and SunZia, may be missing). Plants are generators of 20 MW or more from EIA's June 2026 inventory, sized by capacity.
Flows are power moving between utility systems, not on individual lines. Utilities treat real-time flows on specific lines as confidential grid-security information, so no public source publishes them. The 5-minute view shows trades APS, SRP, TEP and WAPA make in the western real-time market, at named tie points (for example Palo Verde, Four Corners, Mead). The hourly view shows each utility's total reported interchange with its neighbors; EIA posts it with about a two-day delay, and demand within about an hour.
Data center load is our central estimate of today's online load, compared with live demand.
Residential price change, Jan–Jun 2026 vs 2025
EIA monthly retail sales. Arizona's retail sales grew 9.4% over the same months, commercial (where data centers are billed) 14.7%. A correlation, not proof of cause.
Data center share of state electricity
EPRI estimate for 2023 and its moderate-growth 2030 scenario. EPRI's 2026 update says Arizona and Nevada could top 20% by 2030.
State comparison
Water in perspective
Utility load picture
Arizona Corporation Commission — open and recent dockets
Docket numbers link to ACC eDocket search. SRP is not ACC-regulated; its board actions are listed below.
SRP and ED3 actions
Do data centers raise household rates? The evidence
News desk
Arizona
Nevada · New Mexico · Colorado
Archive
Method
Model parameters
Key sources
Sources
Numbered citations used across this site. Click any small number next to a figure to jump here. Individual projects, bills, dockets, agenda items, company commitments and news stories also carry their own source links where they appear. Download the source list (JSON).
About Who Pays AZ
Who Pays AZ is a public data project tracking whether Arizona's large computing projects pay their own way: for the power they use, for the grid upgrades they require, and for the water and community effects they create. It measures projects against four enforceable conditions rather than company pledges.
What we publish
Every known facility and proposal, estimated taxes and construction work, results by legislative district, Arizona's grid and water in context, the policy record at the Legislature, the Corporation Commission and city halls, and the news. News, local agendas, bills and dockets refresh every other day.
How we work
Figures come from public sources, each numbered and linked on the Sources page. Where no public figure exists, we estimate it and say so on the Method page, with low, central and high cases. Industry-sponsored studies and company claims are labeled as such. We don't claim any project has zero impact.
Who is behind it
Who Pays AZ is a project of the Arizona Residents Council.
Data and reuse
The full model is downloadable as an Excel workbook, with every assumption editable. The underlying data files are linked from the Sources page.