If your IID electric bill goes up next year, there is a specific reason to pay attention to what has been happening in the courts and the boardrooms around the Imperial Valley Data Center project.
The IVDC would generate an estimated $30 million per year in net revenue to the Imperial Irrigation District. In utility economics, that number matters beyond its face value. IID operates a regulated utility — its costs are spread across its ratepayer base, and its rates are set to recover those costs plus a reasonable return. When a large, stable industrial customer joins the rate base, the fixed costs of generation, transmission, and distribution infrastructure get spread across a larger total demand. The per-unit cost for every other customer — including every household paying an IID residential bill — decreases.
This is not a speculative model. It is how regulated utility economics work. High-volume, stable industrial loads subsidize residential rates. Always have.
The Z-Global Problem
So why has IID’s institutional posture toward the IVDC been, at best, ambiguous — and at worst, according to the federal lawsuit filed by IVCM, actively obstructive?
The federal complaint filed in Case No. 3:26-cv-00128 alleges that IID’s resistance to the project is not driven by legitimate utility planning concerns. It alleges that Z-Global — a consultancy with deep ties to IID’s leadership — has a competing interest in the transmission capacity and renewable energy development opportunities that the IVDC would occupy.
Z-Global, according to the complaint, wants to develop its own renewable energy projects using the same IID infrastructure that the data center would utilize. An industrial customer consuming 330 megawatts of IID capacity is a direct competitor for the transmission and generation assets that Z-Global’s projects would need. The alleged motivation for IID’s resistance is not protecting ratepayers. It is protecting a consultant’s market position.
What Ratepayers Are Owed
IID ratepayers have a direct stake in how their utility allocates its capacity and serves its largest potential customers. A $30 million annual net revenue contribution from a single industrial customer is not a rounding error in IID’s budget. It is a material improvement in the utility’s financial position — money that can offset rate increases, fund infrastructure maintenance, or retire debt that is otherwise serviced through ratepayer bills.
The suggestion that IID leadership may be making capacity allocation decisions based on the interests of a connected consultancy — rather than the financial interests of the ratepayers the utility exists to serve — is a governance question of the first order. It is the kind of allegation that utility regulators and elected IID board members should be demanding to investigate, not dismissing.
If the allegation in the federal lawsuit is accurate, IID ratepayers are being asked to pay higher rates so that a consultancy with insider access to IID decision-making can protect its business interests. That is a serious claim. It deserves serious scrutiny.
The Independent Grid Advantage
IID’s position as an independent utility — not subject to CAISO’s grid management, operating its own generation and transmission infrastructure — is one of Imperial Valley’s competitive advantages for attracting data center investment. A data center operator that connects directly to IID’s grid gets predictable, stable power from an entity that controls its own supply stack, without the transmission congestion and pricing volatility that affect utilities tied to the broader California grid.
That advantage only holds value if IID is actively trying to attract major industrial customers. An IID that protects incumbent consultants at the expense of large new ratepayers is squandering a genuine competitive asset — and charging its residential customers more than they would otherwise pay for the privilege.
The $30 million question deserves a public answer. IID board members are elected officials. The ratepayers who elect them are entitled to know whether the utility’s decisions about the IVDC are being made in the interests of the people who pay the bills, or in the interests of the people who have the utility’s ear.