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Kavi Chintam

Campaign Manager for Illinois at Vote Solar, a nonprofit solar policy advocacy organization; PhD-trained advocate working on clean energy and data center policy in Illinois.

Oct 2, 2026

18:42
Can you tell us a bit about the POWER Act in Illinois? What is it designed to do?
18:47
So the POWER Act stands for Protecting Our Water, Energy, and Ratepayers.
18:52
Um, it's basically our very comprehensive proposal to have guardrails on hyperscale data centers, which we define as a data center that is 50 megawatts or above, which is actually...
19:05
The definition can range from, like, a minimum of 50 to 100, so we're on the lower end to really capture as many as possible.
19:12
And its basic premise is pretty simple, in my opinion.
19:16
[laughs] It's data centers should pay their own way, they should bring new clean energy to serve their demand, and they should protect local water resources and air, and also provide tangible benefits to the communities that are hosting them.
19:31
They're kind of- I kind of alluded to this, but there are three main buckets in this bill.
22:52
And to, like, bring it now to kind of the brass tacks, uh, where are we at in the process of seeing the POWER Act, uh, g- pass through the legislative system? What's its status now?

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