FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 2026: Over the last two years, PJM Interconnection, the country’s largest grid operator, has been forced to grapple with a variety of issues—including its market design, unprecedented swings in capacity auction clearing prices, controversial MOPR exceptions, fossil generation retirements without replacement, data center-related ratepayer cost controversies, and a stubbornly-clogged interconnection queue and dysfunctional interconnection study process.
Much of this came to a head recently, when PJM’s Independent Market Monitor (IMM), Monitoring Analytics, filed a complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), requesting that FERC explicitly confirm PJM's existing authority under its tariff to sequence, or reject, large new loads until adequate transmission and capacity resources are available to prevent curtailments. The IMM argued that PJM's failure to assert this authority forces stakeholders to develop workaround solutions rather than addressing the root reliability concerns.
On March 23, 2026, FERC issued Order 194 FERC ¶ 61,227, denying the complaint. Writing for the Commission, Chairman Laura V. Swett countered that “the Commission does not issue advisory opinions in the absence of a concrete tariff proposal or an implemented practice that can be evaluated under the Federal Power Act.” The order emphasized that PJM must first bring forward specific tariff language or demonstrate that it has taken an action that can be reviewed; in other words, IMM had to articulate a problem crying out for correction. While FERC’s declaration about PJM’s Market Monitor complaint amounts to “we think IMM doth protest too much,” the ruling leaves the underlying policy question unresolved but does makes clear that FERC expects PJM to initiate a formal process if it wants to clarify or expand its authority over large‑load interconnections.
Among other things, the complaint nevertheless highlights PJM’s nagging inability to ensure continued grid reliability while interconnecting power-hogging data centers and is objectively failing to protect its “ordinary” ratepayers from shouldering costs that many state officials, consumer advocates, and ratepayer advocates say should be apportioned entirely or mostly onto data center owner-operators.
And in that light, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro notably and literally forced PJM to cap its capacity price in the 2025 BRA auction (2026/7 delivery year), accompanied by musings that sound like mutiny—in writing—among several other PJM states’ governors, suggesting the possibility of withdrawing from PJM unless capacity and energy price increases are curtailed and other problems definitively addressed. While the loudest voices in opposition in statehouses may have momentarily quieted a bit, they certainly haven’t been muted.
And while northern Virginia has the largest concentration of data centers nationwide, concerns are being raised in many other locales. A South Jersey community, Monroe Township, is swiftly moving to new block data center construction, including one proposed on the site of a former warehouse. As reported by Nyah Marshall in NJ.com, “Council members said the move was the first step toward banning data centers entirely in the township. That that means is there will be no areas within the Monroe Township zone maps where a data center is permitted,” Monroe Mayor Greg Wolfe said at the meeting. We are committed to figuring out a legal way to ban data centers altogether, but it has to be done the right way,” [Wolfe] added.
The “torches and pitchforks” approach to data centers is gaining ground across the Garden State; in February, Pemberton Township in Burlington County became the first municipality in New Jersey to ban new data centers, while other towns including Phillipsburg are considering similar measures.
Maine, too (in the ISO-New England footprint) is preparing to halt construction of large data centers, a move that would make it the first state to take this step as communities around the country deal with the ripple effects of rapid growth in artificial intelligence. The proposal would block major new facilities until November 2027 while the state studies how these projects affect the environment and the power grid. The pause would cover developments of at least 20 megawatts, an amount of electricity that can keep more than 15,000 homes running.
And in Ohio, home to at least 166 large-scale date centers and growing, according to Sonal Patel of POWER magazine, residents have launched a campaign to place a constitutional amendment on the November 2026 ballot that would ban the construction of new data centers consuming more than twenty-five megawatts of electricity per month. The grassroots group "Ohio Residents for Responsible Development" recently received unanimous approval from the Ohio Ballot Board to begin collecting approximately 413,487 valid signatures from half of the state's eighty-eight counties by July first.
While many data center developers and operators suggest or downright deny that ratepayers are paying their freight, a fall 2025 report from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) found that ratepayers in seven PJM states are already paying for transmission upgrades that were needed to stand up and operate data centers. Even though only those facility owners directly--and significantly--benefited, the entirety of the upgrade costs are being foisted onto all customers, because cost-recovery rules in place didn't anticipate that individual ratepayers could create such enormous demand and associated charges.
The report says "Historically, the typical new data center’s electricity demand has been under 10 megawatts (MW), and grid connections have been similar to ubiquitous, low-voltage retail service on existing distribution lines. In contrast, utilities usually charge the costs of connecting a new, nonstandard individual customer directly to that customer.
Now, the development of 100–400 MW data centers is widespread, and numerous states host projects under development that will call for utilities to deliver 1,000 MW or more. This anomaly, which the reports says is "the worst outcome," is because apportioning transmission costs for data centers falls into what amounts to a "regulatory gap" that was never anticipated by authorities, with the data center costs effectively mixed in with typical costs and approved in rate cases by state regulatory commissions.