# Special rate contract A special rate contract is an individually negotiated electric service agreement between a utility and a specific customer — typically a very large one — under which that customer is served on contract terms rather than a standard published tariff. In Arkansas such contracts are reviewed and approved by the [[Arkansas Public Service Commission]]. ## How it appears in the corpus Special rate contracts matter to this investigation because they are the mechanism by which the largest customers — including, on the available evidence, hyperscale data centers — are kept out of the public class cost-of-service study: - [[Matthew S. Klucher]]'s [[Class Cost of Service Study]] states that he "excluded the load data for customers served under special rate contracts as they are not served under standard retail rates and are not included in cost allocation as part of the CCOS Study" (p. 30). - Klucher's prior-testimony list records that in 2025 he filed testimony in APSC Docket 23-025-P, "Approval of a Special Rate Contract" — a separate, contract-specific proceeding. - [[Entergy Arkansas]]'s [[Entergy CEO Direct Testimony|CEO testimony]] describes an "electric service agreement" with [[Altitude Capital, LLC]] (Google's subsidiary) for the West Memphis data center, "develop[ed]" "under the oversight of the APSC" — the profile of a special rate contract. ## Stakeholders The utility and the large customer negotiate the contract; the Commission approves it. Other ratepayers are affected indirectly — the utility argues a special contract's "contributions to fixed costs" benefit them — but the contract terms are not part of the standard rate case. ## Notes Because special-contract customers are excluded from the cost-of-service study, the public rate-case record does not show what a hyperscale data center pays Entergy Arkansas, or how its negotiated rate compares to its cost of service. This is the structural reason the utility's claim that the data-center deals "provide more than $1.7 billion in savings for EAL customers" cannot be tested against the public record retrieved in this investigation.