Yeah.

Yeah, that's a great question, because for a year when I decided, uh, to run for the Public Utilities Commission, the first two things I talk about, uh, in my campaign are affordability and reliability.

So when it comes to, uh, e- energy in particular, it's very important that it be affordable and that it be reliable.

And, you know, so for us, um, uh, I'll have you know that our state is, has probably the 16th lowest electro- uh, electricity rates in the country, which is pretty good.

It's not very expensive.

But what happens, back to your original question, is, uh, an organization will come to us and say, "Hey, we need to raise the rates," and, and th- there's a number of things that'll go into that.

They'll say, "Well, we need to upgrade this transmission line here.

Is that fair?

It is now.

And yeah, there's something called the Data Center Citizens' Bill of Rights, and there are three primary principles that set out, are set out in that bill or that law now.

Uh, but the two most important ones in my eyes, number one, any data center related cost, uh, especially for studies and so on, uh, can't get passed on to consumers.

Uh, that's a big deal.

And then number two, uh, the local community, whether that's, um, a county government or municipal government, they have to be involved.

And those two principles I think are a pretty good check and balance on whether or not anything like a data center were to advance in South Dakota.

But, uh, so I, I think, I think we let that law work, um, and I think that's a good filter through which to review, uh, any proposed rate changes or things like that that an investor-owned utility might come to us with.

What do you think is gonna be the most, like, pain in the ass?

the Bell plant up in Brookings.

Any large user of electricity, the PUC is going to be very interested in.

Now, with respect to data centers specifically... you will recall that the legislature passed some rules around that this past year called the Data Center Citizens Bill of Rights.

And what they said is if you're going to build a data center in South Dakota, in South Dakota, and that's important, you have to make accommodations and protections around water usage, around noise, and around the impact of your power usage on consumers.

So you have to protect consumers, and you also have to have basically buy-in from the local area.

It's okay for that to be built here.

So South Dakota has, while they haven't done a moratorium, as a state, they have said, look, if you build it here, it's got to have all these protections.

We won't entertain that for the guests, or for the podcast listeners.