The Battle Lines Are Drawn in FERC’s Data Center Fight

The future of the American electric grid is being determined in the docket of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The Trump administration tasked federal energy regulators last month to come up with new rules that would allow large loads — i.e. data centers — to connect to the grid faster without ballooning electricity bills. The order has set off a flurry of reactions, as the major players in the electricity system — the data center developers, the power producers, the utilities — jockey to ensure that any new rules don’t impinge upon their business models. The initial public comment period closed last week, meaning now FERC will have to go through hundreds of comments from industry, government, and advocacy stakeholders, hoping to help shape the rule before it’s released at the end of April.

They’ll have a lot to sift through. Opinions ranged from skeptical to cautiously supportive to fully supportive, with imperfect alignment among trade groups and individual companies.

The Utilities

When the DOE first asked FERC to get to work on a rule, several experts identified a possible conflict with utilities, namely the idea that data centers “should be responsible for 100% of the network upgrades that they are assigned through the interconnection studies.” Utilities typically like to put new transmission into their rate base, where they can earn a regulated rate of return on their investments that’s recouped from payments from all their customers. And lo, utilities were largely skeptical of the exercise.

The Edison Electric Institute, which represents investor-owned utilities, wrote in its comments to FERC that the new rule should require large load customers to pay for their share of the transmission system costs, i.e. not the full cost of network upgrades.

EEI claimed that these network costs can add up to the “tens to hundreds of millions of dollars” that should be assigned in a way that allows utilities “to earn a return of and on the entirety of the transmission network.”

In short, the utilities are defending something like the traditional model, where utilities connect all customers and spread out the costs of doing so among the entire customer base. That model has come under increasing stress thanks to the flood of data center interconnection requests, however. The high costs in some markets, like PJM, have also led some scholars and elected officials to seriously reconsider the nature of utility regulation. Still, that model has been largely good for the utilities — and they show no sign of wanting to give it up.

The Hyperscalers

The biggest technology companies, like Google, Microsoft, and Meta, and their trade groups want to make sure their ability to connect to the grid will not be impeded by new rules.

Ari Peskoe, an energy law professor at Harvard Law School, told me that existing processes for interconnection are likely working out well for the biggest data center developers and they may not be eager to rock the boat with a federal overhaul. “Presumably utilities are lining up to do deals with them because they have so much money,” Peskoe said.

In its letter to FERC, the DOE suggested that the commission could expedite interconnection of large loads “that agree to be curtailable.” That would entail users of a lot of electricity ramping down use while the grid was under stress, as well as co-locating projects with new sources of energy generation that could serve the grid as a whole. This approach has picked up steam among researchers and some data center developers, although with some cautions and caveats.

The Clean Energy Buyers Association, which represents many large technology companies, wrote in its comment that such flexibility should be “structured to enable innovation and competition through voluntary pathways rather than mandates,” echoing criticism of a proposal by the electricity market PJM Interconnection that could have forced large loads to be eligible for curtailment.

The Data Center Coalition, another big tech trade group representing many key players in the data center industry, emphasized throughout their comment that any reform to interconnection should still allow data centers to simply connect to the grid, without requiring or unduly favoring “hybrid” or co-location approaches.

“Timely, predictable, and nondiscriminatory access to interconnection service for stand-alone load is… critical… to the continued functioning of the market itself,” the Data Center Coalition wrote.

The hyperscalers themselves largely echoed this message, albeit with some differences in emphasis. They did not want any of their existing arrangements — which have allowed breakneck data center development — to be disrupted or to be forced into operating their data centers in any particular fashion.

Microsoft wrote that it was in favor of “voluntarily curtailable loads,” but cautioned that “most data centers today have limited curtailment capability,” and worried about “operational reliability risks.” In short, don’t railroad us into something our data centers aren’t really set up to do.

OpenAI wrote a short comment, likely its first ever appearance in a FERC docket, where it argued for “an optional curtailable-load pathway” that would allow for faster interconnection, echoing comments it had made in a letter to the White House.

Meta, meanwhile, argued against any binding rule at all, saying instead that FERC “should consider adopting guidance, best practices, and, if appropriate, minimum standards for large load interconnection rather than promulgating a binding, detailed rule.” After all, its deploying data centers gigawatts at a time and has been able to reach deals with utilities to secure power.

The Generators

Perhaps the most fulsome support for the broadest version of the DOE’s proposal came from the generators. The Electrical Power Supply Association, an independent power producer trade group, wrote that more standardized, transparent “rules of the road” are needed to allow large loads like data centers “to interconnect to the transmission system efficiently and fairly, and to be able to do so quickly.” It also called on FERC to speed up its reviews of interconnection requests.

Constellation, which operates a 32-gigawatt generation fleet with a large nuclear business, said that it “agrees with the motivations and principles outlined in the [Department of Energy’s proposal] and the need for clear rules to allow the timely interconnection of large loads and their co-location with generators.” It also called for faster implementation of large load interconnection principles in PJM, the nation’s largest electricity market, “where data center development has been stymied by disagreements and uncertainty over who controls the timing and nature of large load interconnections, and over the terms of any ensuing transmission service.” Constellation specifically called out utilities for excessive influence over PJM rulemaking and procedures.

Constellation’s stance shouldn’t be surprising, Peskoe told me. From the perspective of independent power producers, enabling data centers to quickly and directly work with regional transmission organizations and generators to come online is “generally going to be better for the generators,” Peskoe said, while utilities “want to be the gatekeeper.”

In the end, the fight over data center interconnection may not have much to do with data centers — it’s just one battle after another between generators and utilities.