Utility Tariff Analysis · Updated September 2026

El Paso Electric's Schedule 27 and SWEPCO's ES-LL Contract: What It Means for AI Data Centre Siting in Texas

Facilities with 75 MW or more of annual peak demand fall under El Paso Electric's new Schedule 27 High Load Factor Large Power Service, requiring an annual load factor of at least 85 percent, or SWEPCO's proposed Electric Service – Large Load Contract, applicable to any customer with 75 MW or more of contract capacity at one facility or in aggregate.

El Paso Electric's Schedule 27 and SWEPCO's ES-LL Contract — AI data centre infrastructure

El Paso Electric's Schedule 27 and SWEPCO's ES-LL Contract

TX

El Paso Electric / Southwestern Electric Power Company (AEP)

59611 (El Paso Electric); 58796 (SWEPCO)

Regulatory docket / filing reference

Facilities with 75 MW or more of annual peak demand

Who the tariff applies to

Facilities with 75 MW or more of annual peak demand fall under El Paso Electric's new Schedule 27 High Load Factor Large Power Service, requiring an annual load factor of at least 85 percent, or SWEPCO's proposed Electric Service – Large Load Contract, applicable to any customer with 75 MW or more of contract capacity at one facility or in aggregate.

Also active in Texas: Texas also carries the country's single largest publicly announced project pipeline: AEP Texas alone is serving a $15 billion Lancium/OpenAI Stargate campus near Abilene and a $17 billion, 1 GW Hut8 project in Corpus Christi.

Named Projects Already Underway

CustomerLocationDetails
Lancium (OpenAI Stargate Project)Abilene, TX$15 billion data centre campus, part of the OpenAI Stargate initiative
Hut8Corpus Christi, TX$17 billion, 1 GW data centre project at the Beacon Point site

Figures compiled from the Edison Electric Institute's "Large Load Projects and Tariffs" (September 2026) member-company summary and public regulatory filings. Confirm current tariff terms directly with El Paso Electric / Southwestern Electric Power Company (AEP) and the relevant state public utility commission before relying on any figure for a capital decision.

Weighing Texas against another state or a Canadian province with a different rate and interconnection picture entirely? Run both sides of the comparison through our licensed AI data centre cost configurator — it applies each jurisdiction's actual power rate, tax treatment and large-load tariff rules to the same seven build configurations.

Model This State on Your Own Site

Every figure above comes from the same power-cost and tariff dataset behind the SCR AI Build Configurator — a licensed, embeddable widget that models seven data centre build configurations against all nine Canadian provinces and all 50 US states plus DC, returning capital expenditure by line item, energy cost, revenue by commercial structure, EBITDA and payback.

LicencePrice (CAD)Who it suits
Standard$4,000 / domain / yearAdvisors who need three lease-model configurations and a clipboard summary
Pro$10,000 / domain / yearConsultants who send CSV deliverables to clients and want all seven configurations
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Not ready for an annual licence? A one-time Site Screening Report ($950, one site) runs the same model for a single build without embedding anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is El Paso Electric's Schedule 27 and SWEPCO's ES-LL Contract?

Facilities with 75 MW or more of annual peak demand fall under El Paso Electric's new Schedule 27 High Load Factor Large Power Service, requiring an annual load factor of at least 85 percent, or SWEPCO's proposed Electric Service – Large Load Contract, applicable to any customer with 75 MW or more of contract capacity at one facility or in aggregate.

Why did El Paso Electric / Southwestern Electric Power Company (AEP) introduce this large-load structure?

To ensure the cost of new generation, transmission and distribution infrastructure built to serve very large customers, chiefly hyperscale data centres, is paid for by those customers rather than spread across the general rate base of residential and small commercial ratepayers.

What large data centre projects are already active in Texas?

Texas also carries the country's single largest publicly announced project pipeline: AEP Texas alone is serving a $15 billion Lancium/OpenAI Stargate campus near Abilene and a $17 billion, 1 GW Hut8 project in Corpus Christi.

Does this tariff replace Texas's standard commercial and industrial rates?

No. El Paso Electric's Schedule 27 and SWEPCO's ES-LL Contract sits above El Paso Electric / Southwestern Electric Power Company (AEP)'s standard commercial and industrial rate schedules and applies specifically to customers that meet or exceed the large-load threshold described above. Smaller commercial and industrial loads continue to be billed under existing rate schedules.

How can I model a Texas data centre build against this tariff and other states?

The SCR AI Build Configurator applies Texas's power cost, tax treatment and large-load tariff rules alongside all other US states and Canadian provinces, so a Texas scenario can be compared line-by-line against any alternative site.