Mississippi has now seen the data center problem from three vantage points.
From one end, Amazon cut a sweetheart deal — SB 2001 — that handed it access to Entergy’s grid while keeping the contracts secret from the ratepayers who will subsidize it. From the middle, xAI built 27 unpermitted natural gas turbines in Southaven — no air permit, no public notice — and Mississippi regulators rubber-stamped it. The NAACP and Earthjustice filed a federal lawsuit on April 14 to stop it. From the other end, Prado AI Industrial, LLC wants to build a massive private power plant in Ridgeland, declare itself not a public utility, and skip every layer of Mississippi’s utility regulations.
Amazon’s model socializes the costs. xAI’s model skips permitting entirely. Prado AI’s model socializes the risks. None of them is a good deal for Mississippians.
Prado AI is asking to do through the front door what xAI walked through the back. That is a pattern, not a one-off. Here is what Prado AI is actually proposing.
The company wants to build an “advanced industrial campus” in Ridgeland — AI data center, semiconductor fabrication, and a 350-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant. (That is bigger than most utility peaker plants.) In MPSC Docket 2026-AD-10, filed April 14, it asked the Mississippi Public Service Commission (PSC) for a declaratory opinion that it is not a public utility and does not need a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN). No PSC oversight. No CPCN. Just a large private gas plant sited in Ridgeland, accountable to no one.
Ridgeland is where many people landed after leaving Jackson. They wanted quiet neighborhoods, safe streets, clean affordable water, better quality of life. They didn’t sign up for a 350-MW gas plant and an industrial semiconductor campus as neighbors.
This isn’t just a ratepayer issue. It’s a quality-of-life issue. And a governance issue — top-down deals cut by central planners and corporate suits with little or no input from residents’ elected representatives.
Entergy Mississippi filed a brief arguing that Prado AI is wrong on the law. On this one, Entergy is correct. (Had to slap my hand like Dr. Strangelove to make it write that.) Entergy is guarding its turf, and has the law on its side. So it respects the law in this case.
Under Mississippi Code §77-3-3(d), generating and furnishing electricity to paying tenants makes you a public utility. The landlord-tenant exception Prado AI is reaching for is narrow. By any honest reading, it doesn’t cover a 350-MW commercial power plant serving multiple industrial customers.
Prado AI will likely argue the §77-3-14 exemption for facilities built “primarily for that person’s own use.” That argument fails too on the facts. A 350-MW plant serving multiple paying industrial tenants is not own use by any honest reading. And §77-3-14 still requires any “other person” to obtain a CPCN before constructing a generation facility in Mississippi. Entergy holds the exclusive CPCN for Ridgeland. You can’t get around that by calling your tenants something other than customers.
But the deeper problem isn’t the legal definition. It’s the fiction that “off-grid” is permanent. Data centers do not tolerate downtime. When Prado AI’s gas plant goes down for maintenance — or trips offline unexpectedly — those AI servers and semiconductor fabs will need power immediately. Where will they get it? The grid.
At that moment, Prado AI wants backup from the system Mississippi ratepayers have spent decades paying for: transmission infrastructure, spinning reserves, substations, MISO interconnects. Not to worry that Prado has no skin in that game.
Entergy’s brief is right that any future grid interconnection must go through proper MISO processes — not because MISO is a competent bureaucracy, but because the process protects long-time ratepayers from freeloaders.
Off the grid puts someone on the hook.
This brings us to the MPSC’s moment. The Commission exists for situations like this. Its job is to protect the public interest in Mississippi’s energy infrastructure. It could start with Prado. If the Commission issues the declaratory opinion Prado AI wants, it doesn’t just decide that case. It sets a precedent: any large industrial entity can build private generation in Mississippi, serve paying customers, and escape utility regulation by calling it something else.
The Legislature, with Entergy’s help, weakened PSC oversight with SB 2001. The Commission should not relinquish what’s left. This is what should happen.
The MPSC should not issue the declaratory opinion Prado AI wants. It should make clear that a 350-MW gas plant serving paying tenants in Ridgeland requires a CPCN, full stop. It should put Prado AI on notice that any future grid interconnection goes through the MISO process, not around it. And Mississippians — especially ratepayers in Entergy’s service territory — should watch Docket 2026-AD-10 closely.
The Trump administration says data centers should bring their own electricity. Fine. But bringing your own electricity doesn’t mean building a private power plant in a Mississippi city with no siting review, no environmental accountability, no grid reliability obligations, and no public oversight. That is a taking of neighborhood quality — imposed by corporate fiat, without the consent of the people who live there. It makes the nice houses on Old Agency Road not as nice — or as valuable.
The Commission has the law on its side, and for once, neither the Governor nor the Legislature is running interference for a monopoly utility. The Commission should do its job.
Kelley Williams, a Northsider, is chairman of Bigger Pie, a Jackson-based think tank promoting free markets and government efficiency.
