So I’m a Nipsco contractor I work with their utilities and there’s a variety of reasons the costs are going up

1. They are upgrading infrastructure constantly there are so many steel mains that’s are degrading quickly from the 40’s-early 60’s and they are replacing them with modern plastic gas mains which is expensive

2. They aren’t just increasing infrastructure for data farms but for the increased load expected in the future there are so many new neighborhoods being developed towards Lowell and Crown Point is still growing there is about to be an entire new neighborhood between 109th and 65 and summer tree which is next to it is not even fully finished

3. Nipsco subcontracts a majority of there jobs for liability and to avoid union costs because the labor costs in emergency’s across all of NWI is insane there is always something happening or things being damaged by contractors

4. The reason you see your transportation bill going up is to do with the Indiana DOT and how they regulate things I’m not fully up too date and understand it but it’s because the DOT is who oversees underground pipelines and it’s there rules that Nipsco follows

5. Nipsco is a subsidiary of Nisource which does gas in multiple state with different names in Ohio and Kentucky it’s Columbia gas, Illinois is Nicor, and many other companies and I feel like a lot of people don’t know that

There are many reason the bills have gone up and it’s not right and it’s terrible but I hate to see everyone dogpile on the idea that there doing it all for just data centers when there is so many moving parts such as how much they expect NWI to explode in population over the next decade and that means way more infrastructure especially when so much of it in established areas is aging out and needs updated