Data centers excluded from gross annual retail energy sales for energy conservation and optimization purposes.

HF 3296 amends Minnesota law to exclude energy sales to qualifying data centers from a utility's "gross annual retail energy sales" calculation. This directly affects data centers and utilities, as it removes these sales from the metric used to determine eligibility for certain energy conservation programs. To qualify for exclusion, a data center must verify its compliance with the bill's definition (a facility primarily processing digital information) and meet a 40% peak demand threshold relative to the utility's system. The change applies to electric sales and aims to adjust how energy consumption data is counted for conservation planning purposes.