Whether or not the Legislature and the Public Utilities Commission invite hyperscale data centers into South Dakota, South Dakotans are already footing the bill for the power needs of AI-boomers in other states:
But there is one side of the equation that doesn’t depend on local policy decisions. South Dakota is part of a regional electrical grid called Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) — the operator responsible for energy flow across 15 Midwestern states, serving more than 42 million consumers. When that grid expands its infrastructure, the costs are shared among all member states, regardless of where the construction takes place.
In December 2024, MISO approved a $21.8 billion transmission expansion plan: 24 projects, two of which run directly through South Dakota. Part of that bill will be passed on to South Dakota consumers. This will happen even if no data center is ever built within the state. The expansion is driven largely by data center demand in other states across the region [Nina Luz, “The Energy Price of Artificial Intelligence: What South Dakota Stands to Gain and Pay,” Dakota Institute, 2026.06.28].
So we’re already paying more for electricity just to create more lying robots. Does South Dakota want to make the world worse by powering those robots with noisy server warehouses on our own turf?