The U.S. Department of Energy filed a statement of position at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on 7 October asking PJM Interconnection to rework its reliability backstop procurement so that data centers and other large loads pay for the capacity they cause to be built. Utility Dive, which reported the filing on 8 October, says it appears to be DOE's first filing at FERC in at least five years.
The backstop is a one-off procurement of about 6.8 GW of new capacity to cover the shortfall PJM found in its auction for the 2028/29 delivery year, after two base auctions in a row fell short of the reserve margin target, largely on data-center load forecasts. Offers were to be taken from 30 September. On 29 September FERC accepted the design in part, including a weighted offer cap of 555 $/MW-day, but found that the cost allocation, the rules for transmission owners leaving PJM and the collateral demanded from load-serving entities may be unjust and unreasonable, and set a hearing running into February. PJM put the procurement on hold the next day.
What Washington Asked For
DOE's requests are specific, according to Utility Dive: allocate the backstop cost on updated load forecasts; track in near-real time whether each large-load project enters service, slips, shrinks or is cancelled, so the cost follows the customer who caused it; improve project-level data so PJM can reconcile its base forecast and cut the procurement target when forecast load does not appear; and close a gap under which large loads already in PJM's baseline forecast might escape the tariff altogether. DOE wrote that large loads must fund the generation and related infrastructure for their projects rather than households and other business customers, and tied the filing to the White House's Ratepayer Protection Pledge, which AEP, AES, CenterPoint, Dominion, Exelon, FirstEnergy and PPL have signed in the PJM footprint.
PJM will not wait for the hearing. Spokesman Jeffrey Shields told Utility Dive that the operator intends to refile a revised backstop at FERC by 29 October, with a special Members Committee meeting on 22 October. FERC chair Laura Swett had written in her concurrence that the commission would not be pushed into accepting a flawed, last-minute mechanism; Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative had told FERC the original collateral rules would have required it to post about 2 billion dollars.
Pennsylvania Moves First on Curtailment
The states are not waiting either. On 1 October the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission voted 4-0 for a tentative order under which large new loads that have not secured enough new capacity would be curtailed before other customers when PJM calls an interim resource adequacy event, and utilities would be barred from listing data centers as critical load exempt from emergency cuts. Utilities would keep a registry of large loads and set notification procedures. Comments run 30 days from publication in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, a technical conference on cost allocation is set for 17 November, and a final order is expected on 28 January 2027.
Put the two together and the direction for standby plants in PJM is plain. A campus that has not brought its own supply will be first in line to be cut, and when it is cut, its generators run. The permit, the fuel contract and the maintenance plan of a generator yard were usually written for rare outages and monthly tests; a yard that may be asked to carry the site during a grid emergency needs the run hours, fuel logistics and exhaust aftertreatment checked against that case. We wrote about the Google-Constellation contract and the May curtailment order yesterday; this week's filings show the rule-making catching up.
Sources: Utility Dive (DOE filing), Utility Dive (FERC order), First News Now PA (PUC release)