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Bartlesville
Posted: Feb 17, 2026 10:36 AMUpdated: Feb 17, 2026 10:36 AM
CITY MATTERS with City Councilor Aaron Kirkpatrick: City Election and Proposal for Data Centers and Electricity Costs
Tom Davis
Appearing on KWON Radio's CITY MATTERS program, Bartlesville City Councilor Aaron Kirkpatrick began by thanking voters for approving all the measures in the February 10th city election where all issues passed by an average margin of 74%.
Kirkpatrick said, "We had a little over 3,000 people come out and vote. That's up basically 50% from last time, which means that people knew what was going on." He added, "People had researched the issue. People had made up their minds and people came and voted."
The councilor quickly pivoted to talk about huge mega data centers that may soon impact electric ratepayers in Oklahoma. Kirkpatrick said that companies are building them as fast as they can all over the country. He isn't aware of any coming to Bartlesville but it is probably only a matter of time until we get asked.
According to Kirkpatrick, these companies are looking for is basically cheap electricity and water. The data centers, even a small one, uses as much electricity as tens of thousands of homes and the biggest ones use as much electricity as 2 million homes.
Kirkpatrick said that PSO is asking for a 15% rate increase on electricity and the experts that he listens to are projecting that nationwide the average increase over the next couple of years will be 30% and potentially as much as 100% preparing for the data centers that run artificial intelligence.
Unlike a regular business that's going to have peaks and valleys. A data center draws a constant power 24/7 365. He said, "At the local level, we don't have one yet. But there are people protesting and there are people really concerned. And then there is this other idea of 'if they don't build here, they'll build somewhere else' and then these jobs will go somewhere else."
Kirkpatrick said that he has been trying to communicate with some of our state lawmakers about plans that will make things better, like allowing the data centers to produce their own electricity or even requiring them to pay more during peak usage times to help level out the cost of electricity.
Kirkpatrick has been trying to put out there this idea of what he calls the 110% rule, which is that data centers ought to be required as the baseline level of entry to create 110% of the energy they will use as new power generation. Under his plan, a data center wold then be producing abundance. He said, "You increase that by 10%, there's now 10% more electricity than they're going to use, which makes everybody else in that community's energy rates drop."
Kirkipatrick believes that this is where the opportunity lays in these new data centers. Kirkpatrick said, "If they're required to generate their own electricity before they can go live, so that our bills don't go up, the fastest way for them to do that is not to build some kind of a power plant that'll take a long time to come online. It is to fund other people to create that power."
Kirkpatrick further proposed that If the data center companies paid to put up solar panels on homes and businesses, the ratepayers would have their electricity bill cut to functionally zero, that represents millions of dollar of new spending capacity in a community that simply by no longer has to pay for their electricity.
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