Large Load Interconnection

Data centers are connecting to the transmission system faster than the reliability rules were built to handle and behaving nothing like the passive load those rules assumed. Here’s what the North American Electric Reliability Corp.’s (NERC’s) Large Loads Action Plan, a new class of registered entity, and a hard 2026 deadline mean for anyone planning, […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) to file one or more new or modified mandatory reliability standards governing the integration of computational loads—a category defined broadly enough to cover generative-AI data centers, cryptocurrency mines, and other information-technology facilities—by Dec. 31, 2026. FERC’s order, issued on July […]

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has set a June 2026 deadline to act in a high-stakes rulemaking that could redefine how massive new power users—including AI-driven data centers—connect to the U.S. interstate transmission system. In an April 16 order in its “Interconnection of Large Loads to the Interstate Transmission System” docket (RM26-4-000), the commission […]

Seven of the nation’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) companies and hyperscalers signed a White House-brokered agreement March 4 committing to build, procure, or fund new generation capacity sufficient to cover the electricity demands of their data centers—and to pay for all grid infrastructure upgrades required to connect them, without passing those costs to residential or […]