“There’s no doubt my 2017 experience — that was politically driven,” Chatterjee told me, though he did concede that Perry was “right to be concerned about retiring generation at the time.” The Perry plan had been heavily influenced by the coal industry, he told me, and the regulatory structure of “compensating plants for having the attribute of on-site fuel … it was just a bit of a stretch.”
Now there’s a new Trump administration, with a new Secretary of Energy and a new FERC — and on Thursday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright asked the commission to do something else. He put forward what’s known as an advance notice of proposed rulemaking, directing FERC to come up with ways to help to make sure the grid can deal with another large-scale transition.
“They’re just apples and oranges,” Chatterjee said of the two requests. “This is a much more elegant, much more thoughtful exercise.”
Wright’s letter lays out the challenge of integrating large loads — i.e. data centers — onto the grid, arguing that they “must be able to connect to the transmission system in a timely, orderly, and non-discriminatory manner.” Doing so, he said, will “require unprecedented and extraordinary quantities of electricity and substantial investment in the Nation’s interstate transmission system.”
The overall thrust of the proposal is to make things easier and faster, including suggesting that interconnection studies for large loads that have their own generation or are flexible could be finished in just 60 days — which, if successful, could take a process that can last for years and get it done in less than a season.
The notice suggests a number of reforms for FERC to consider, including faster interconnection for “large loads that agree to be curtailable and hybrid facilities that agree to be curtailable and dispatchable” — touching on what has been the hottest subject in energy policy this year.
Tyler Norris, a Duke University researcher who has been one of the leading promoters of load flexibility, called Wright’s notice a “BFD” — that is, big effing deal — in a brief email to Heatmap.
Norris elaborated further on X. The proposal “appears to have done the near-impossible — generate overwhelming bipartisan enthusiasm — in what may be the most positive cross-sector response we’ve seen yet to DOE action under Secretary Wright,” he wrote.
Wright’s proposal suggests that both new data centers and new sources of power should be studied together for interconnection. While this sounds like it would be adding complexity, it may actually be simplifying the process. “Such an approach will allow for efficient siting of loads and generating facilities and thereby minimize the need for costly network upgrades,” the proposal says, reflecting the twinned desire to get more data centers on line faster while shielding electricity consumers from higher costs.
Another of Wright’s suggestions, however, might face more opposition. He argues that “load and hybrid facilities should be responsible for 100% of the network upgrades that they are assigned through the interconnection studies.”
This is designed to address the possibility — already being realized in parts of the country — that the network infrastructure required to bring data centers online could lead to higher costs for all electricity customers served by a given utility as it spreads out those costs to its rate base. The risk, however, is that utilities won’t like it. That’s because in most of the country, utilities earn a regulated rate of return on their investment in grid upgrades (by way of customer bill payments, of course), creating an incentive for them to continue to spend.
Those dynamics may be changing. Utilities once enjoyed primacy in Washington on electricity policy, especially among Republicans, but have seen their status slip of late in favor of a new force: big tech companies with big data centers.
“The hyperscalers have the influence to counteract the utilities here,” Chatterjee told me. “And that’s a new dynamic, historically — when it came to FERC, when it came to DOE, when it came to, quite frankly, Congress. People are sensitive to their utilities.”
Wright’s proposal, Chatterjee said, is trying to balance several different considerations the White House faces.
“This is the most vexing issue before the commission right now. And the reality is, it’s not clean politically within FERC, within DOE, even within the White House. There are differences of opinion on how best to thread this needle,” he told me, pointing to divides between those who want to drive AI development as fast as possible and those who are concerned about electricity prices.
By contrast, the Perry proposal to FERC was widely recognized as being primarily about supporting the coal (and to some extent nuclear) industry.
“I really think what DOE has put forward here is kind of an elegant solution that touches on everything,” Chatterjee said. “It’s not preferring particular sources of generation. It’s for flexibility — flexibility is having its moment.”
The proposal has already won some plaudits from the technology industry. In a letter to the White House, OpenAI Chief Global Affairs Officer Christopher Lehane wrote that the company “welcomed the news last week that DOE recommended to FERC that it assert jurisdiction and create standardized rules for large load interconnections.” He also noted that OpenAI’s data centers “are designed to be curtailable — reducing their draw or even returning power during peak demand, helping to protect reliability and avoid higher costs for consumers.”
The DOE gave FERC an April 2026 deadline for final action on the proposed rulemaking, and FERC said Monday night that comments would be due by November 14.
Chatterjee said he expects FERC to eventually issue rules based on the proposal on a unanimous and bipartisan basis.
“I think the initial thought was, Oh, here goes the Trump administration again, leaning on FERC. This is actually a thoughtful exercise that I think most people in the energy space recognize is necessary to be done.”
IEA
A runner-up in the ESA's Little Pictures of Climate 2023 competitionESA
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Win McNamee/Getty Images
