Utilities have spent years preparing for change. What many are facing now is acceleration.
This week, MISO said its peak load could rise to 163 GW by 2035, up from 121 GW last year, driven largely by data center growth. It also warned that limited transparency, uncertain project pipelines, and rapid shifts in technology are making long-range forecasting harder. That is a planning challenge, of course. But it is also a communications challenge. Because when growth starts moving this fast, utilities are not just managing load. They are managing questions.
Who benefits?
Who pays?
How will reliability be protected?
What does this mean for existing customers and communities?
Is leadership being fully transparent about the tradeoffs?
If utilities do not answer those questions early and credibly, other people will answer them for them.
This Is Not Just a Load Story
It is tempting to frame data center growth as a capacity issue, a regulatory issue, or a system-planning issue. It is all of those things. But it is also a trust issue.
Customers want to know whether they will end up subsidizing someone else’s growth. Regulators want to know whether the assumptions behind forecasts will hold up under scrutiny. Community leaders want to understand what this means for local infrastructure, land use, and quality of life. Employees want to know how priorities are shifting and whether leadership is being candid about what lies ahead. Those are not secondary concerns. They are central to how utilities maintain credibility during periods of rapid change.
And the warning signs are already there. Maine lawmakers recently advanced legislation that could make the state the first in the country to impose a moratorium on new data centers, driven by concerns over household energy bills and environmental impact. At the same time, utilities are striking major agreements tied to data center growth, including NiSource’s recently announced deal connected to an Alphabet-related project in northern Indiana and its expanded arrangement with Amazon. These are not just business stories. They are public-trust stories.
Communications Alone Will Not Carry This
Utilities absolutely need strong communications right now. They need clear, consistent, executive-level messaging about customer impact, affordability, fairness, reliability, and system readiness. They need language that is accurate enough for regulators, plain enough for customers, and credible enough for employees. They need leaders who can explain not just what is changing, but what guardrails are in place and what tradeoffs are being managed.
But communications alone is not enough. This moment also requires community outreach.
That matters because this issue will not be understood or accepted through filings, press releases, FAQs, website updates, and talking points alone. Utilities also need meaningful engagement (yes, actual interaction) with local officials, community stakeholders, economic development partners, and customers, trying to make sense of what these projects mean where they live.
Communications tells people what is happening. Community outreach helps utilities understand what people are worried about. You need both. Outreach creates room for listening, not just explaining. It gives utilities the chance to hear concerns while there is still time to respond. It helps identify misunderstandings before they harden into opposition. And it demonstrates care in a way one-way messaging rarely can.
Earlier this year, that dynamic played out locally in Naperville, where city leaders rejected a proposed data center after months of debate and public comment focused on concerns like noise, diesel generators, air quality, zoning fit, and proximity to homes and parks. That is a useful reminder that communities do not experience data center growth as a load forecast. They experience it as a nearby project with visible consequences. That is exactly why formal communications need to be matched with early, credible community outreach.
The Risk of Waiting Too Long
In my experience, utilities are strongest when they treat communications and outreach as part of implementation, not as activities that begin once a decision is already in motion.
By the time a filing is public or a major project is announced, many stakeholders are already deciding whether they trust the process. If leaders wait until that moment to explain fairness, customer protections, community impact, or system benefits, they are already behind.
That is where many organizations get into trouble. Not because they have no message, but because they started too late. When stakeholders feel surprised, they rarely interpret that as efficiency. They interpret it as exclusion.
What Utilities Should Be Doing Now
There are four things utilities should be doing right now as large-load growth accelerates.
1. Explain the customer-impact framework early
If there are protections for existing customers, say so clearly. If there are still unanswered questions, say that clearly too. Silence creates suspicion faster than complexity does.
2. Translate technical planning into plain-language outcomes
Most stakeholders do not care first about queue mechanics, deposits, or load factor assumptions. They care about reliability, affordability, fairness, timing, and whether leadership is telling the whole story.
3. Treat community outreach as part of the operating plan
That means more than a public meeting or a polished slide deck. It means intentional listening, clear local engagement, and visible responsiveness to community concerns.
4. Align internal and external messaging
Employees should not be piecing together the story from trade coverage, regulatory filings, and hallway conversations. If leaders want confidence outside the organization, they need clarity inside it too.
The Real Burden on Utilities
Utilities do not need to panic about this moment. But they do need to respect it. Data center growth is changing planning assumptions across the industry. It is also changing the communication burden on utilities. The job now is not only to plan for growth. It is to communicate that growth in a way that protects trust, shows care, and holds up under scrutiny.
The burden is not just to keep the lights on. It is to keep trust in the system too.
Utilities do not need to have every answer today. But they do need to start communicating earlier, listening more intentionally, and treating community outreach as part of implementation rather than an afterthought.