Commissioner Rosner had sensible things to say about the FERC order that will allow many data centers to go ahead. It will allow centers with backup power to connect without huge costs for baseload power reserve. Over 90% of the time the grid has excess capacity. During peaks, the centers would switch to backup. Savings for everyone.
Important facts
FERC issued Section 206 show-cause orders to all six RTOs/ISOs on June 18, 2026, directing each to justify or revise its large-load interconnection rules. The orders followed the Secretary of Energy’s October 2025 ANOPR and an April 2026 FERC order confirming intent to act; all five commissioners concurred.
Cost Recovery Agreements require large loads to pay for infrastructure built to serve them even if the project falls through, so residential ratepayers don’t absorb stranded costs. RTOs must also consider grid-enhancing technologies like dynamic line ratings before building new infrastructure, and explain it if they don’t.
The orders target speculative interconnection requests — developers shopping the same project to multiple utilities — with escalating readiness requirements such as proof of site control. More than half of US states have already enacted their own large-load tariffs.
The RTOs and their transmission owners have 60 days from issuance, through August 17, 2026, to either show cause why current rules are fine or propose tariff revisions under Section 205, with a further 30-day comment window after that.
What the orders do
Flexible, non-firm transmission service for co-located loads willing to curtail gets extended, for the first time, to large loads that aren’t co-located but can still flex, in every RTO. The orders also formalize Bring Your Own New Generation — studying a load and an electrically proximate generator together — following SPP’s HILLGA model, approved by the Commission in January.
States keep cost allocation to retail ratepayers and siting authority; FERC handles the interconnection and tariff mechanics. The jurisdictional split stays intentionally intact.
Author and credits
Commissioner David Rosner, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission — concurring statement delivered at the Commission’s June 18, 2026 Open Meeting, accompanying six Section 206 show-cause orders, Items E-7 through E-12.
Link
Summary
The orders mark the most coordinated federal action yet on large-load interconnection, though several law-firm trackers note carefully that it’s an opening move: 60 days of show cause, then filings, protests and likely rehearing requests, not a single national rule.
Rosner frames the choice as durability — give large loads, mostly AI data centers and manufacturing, a faster path onto the grid, while keeping residential customers off the hook for stranded costs and keeping states in the cost-allocation seat.
Conclusions
Nothing here energizes a stranded project next quarter. It reallocates risk so developers absorb it instead of ratepayers, rewards flexibility and co-location over simply cutting in line, and puts a hard deadline on RTOs that have mostly moved at their own pace. Whether it actually speeds connections depends on what the RTOs file back by August 17, and on rehearing after that.
edited and authored by Dave with close collaboration by Claude