Congressman asks regulators to make data centers bring their own power for good
The top Democrat on the House energy committee wants federal regulators to approve, and toughen, new rules for data centers on the country's largest power grid.
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. of New Jersey, the senior Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote to the chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on September 28. His subject was PJM, the grid operator that serves all or part of 13 states and the District of Columbia, and its recent proposals for handling data centers.
Pallone urged the commission to approve those proposals and go further in three ways: make data centers pay for all of the costs they cause, not only for new power plants; make permanent a requirement that data centers bring new generating capacity online; and make a proposed registry of data centers public.
The letter spells out the pressure behind the request. It says data centers are responsible for nearly $30 billion in added costs in PJM’s capacity market since the summer of 2024, and for more than 90 percent of the demand growth PJM expects by the end of the decade.
Why it matters
A rule that a data center must arrive with its own new power supply is this site's first argument written into grid policy. If it becomes permanent in the largest grid in the country, building your own generation stops being a choice and becomes the price of admission.
Reality check
This is one lawmaker's letter, not a decision. The commission has not said what it will do, and the cost figures are the letter's own.
Source ROI-NJ