Five days after this desk asked whether homes would end up paying for data centres that reserve more power than they use, the government has given an answer, and it is a clearer one than the review alone suggested. Investment, Trade and Industry Minister Datuk Seri Johari Abdul Ghani told the Dewan Rakyat on 15 October 2026 that data centre investors will pay to upgrade the transmission lines they need, and will be billed for the full capacity they reserve whether or not they use it (The Edge Malaysia).
His example was simple. An operator that secures 200 megawatts but draws only 100MW pays for all 200. "The other 100MW that you do not use, we assume you have used it. We charge you," he said, as quoted by The Edge. Upgrades that Tenaga Nasional Bhd says are needed become part of the investor's project cost, a rule the minister framed as protecting the economic activities that existed before data centres arrived.
FMT reported further conditions from the same session: data centres pay the market electricity tariff, sit on a rate separate from other consumers, can no longer draw on household or industrial subsidies, and must adopt water recycling to ease the pressure on state supplies (FMT).
The reserved-capacity charge is the part that protects homes
In Rummah News' view, the take-or-pay charge on reserved capacity matters more than the headline about grid upgrades. When we wrote about the Energy Commission's review on 13 October, the open problem was overbooking: operators were asking for more power and water than they consumed (our earlier report). A reservation that costs nothing invites a company to book big and build later, and the network gets sized for demand that may never arrive. Someone pays for that idle capacity, and without a rule like this one, the most likely someone is the ordinary account holder.
Charging for the full reservation puts the risk back on the party that created it. That is the right instinct, and it is the one households in Johor and Selangor, where our earlier piece found this tension sharpest, should want written down.
Because so far it is a statement in Parliament, not a tariff schedule. The numbers around it also need tidying. The Edge quoted the minister as saying TNB supplies 36 data centres, while FMT reported 57 centres in operation using 6,237MW, with 60 more projects needing 11,172MW. Figures that far apart should be settled by the ministry before anyone claims the policy is working, and they matter, because the size of the pipeline is exactly what decides how much grid has to be built.
Two documents would turn the promise into protection: a published data centre tariff that sits visibly apart from the domestic tariff, and a TNB grid plan that shows which upgrades are billed to which investor. Until they exist, the honest answer to last week's question is that households are not meant to carry the cost, and the minister has now said so on the record. That is worth holding him to.
Sources: The Edge Malaysia, FMT, EdgeProp, Business Today.
