PJM control over new data center connections to the transmission system necessary to maintain reliability, OPC tells federal regulators
BALTIMORE – Regional electric system reliability will be compromised and unreasonably high market prices will prevail unless PJM controls the connection of new data centers to the transmission system, OPC said in comments filed this week with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
“Adding data centers with city-sized power demands to the regional power system when there is not enough generation capacity to serve them reliably increases costs for existing customers and exposes them to reliability risks,” Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp said. “PJM’s responsibility is to maintain the reliability of the regional system.”
OPC’s comments—filed jointly with State consumer advocates from Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, and Delaware—supported the PJM Independent Market Monitor’s November complaint objecting to PJM “allow[ing] the interconnection of large new data center loads that it cannot serve reliably and that will require load curtailments (blackouts) of the data centers or of other customers.”
The market monitor’s complaint asks FERC to rule that “PJM has the authority to add large new data center loads only when they can be served reliably as defined both by transmission and capacity adequacy.”
OPC’s comments, which support the market monitor’s request, explain that the magnitude of additional load from new data center customers has raised capacity market prices and imposed costs for transmission expansion on all customers in the region. It is highly unlikely that sufficient new generation can be added in the time required to meet PJM’s projected new data center load—about 50,000 megawatts by 2032, about four times Maryland’s entire load built up over a century. Thus, without PJM action, the reliability of electricity supply for all customers will be adversely impacted, OPC said.
OPC and the other state advocates also responded to a motion by separate coalitions of data centers and generators to dismiss the complaint. OPC asked FERC to fully consider the complaint under the procedural deadline already established for the case.
“It is critical that FERC take action on the complaint to preserve reliability for all customers in PJM and to prevent existing customers from paying for costs caused by data centers,” Lapp said.
The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel is an independent state agency that represents Maryland’s residential consumers of electric, natural gas, telecommunications, private water and certain transportation matters before the Public Service Commission, federal regulatory agencies and the courts.
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