On October 23, 2025, Energy Secretary Chris Wright directed FERC to do something it had never done before: standardize how large loads — those over 20 megawatts — connect directly to the interstate transmission system. The directive was urgent and specific. FERC must issue final action by April 30, 2026. With 28 days remaining, the agency is working toward what may be the most consequential grid-access rulemaking in a generation. The Secretary's own language is revealing: he explicitly conceded that FERC 'has not exerted jurisdiction over load interconnections' historically, then argued it should now. What this actually is: a federal power grab dressed as a grid modernization.
The context is clear and gets clearer when you look at demand numbers. U.S. data centers drove a 22% increase in electricity demand in 2025 and could triple by 2030. Electricity generation has been growing at 2% per year since 2021; EIA expects it to accelerate to 3.1% growth in 2027, with ERCOT leading the expansion. Meanwhile, developers plan to add 24 gigawatts of utility-scale battery storage in 2026 — 60% more than the 15 GW added in 2025 — and 43.4 GW of new solar, a 60% increase over last year. The grid is being flooded from two directions: massive new load growth on the demand side and record renewable capacity additions on the supply side. The transmission system, which moves power from generation to load, has become a hard constraint. FERC's rulemaking is the attempt to remove that constraint by asserting federal control over how loads enter the system.
The technical details matter because they will determine who pays for what. FERC's proposal adopts a 100% participant funding model. This means a data center or large industrial user will pay the full cost of every transmission upgrade its project triggers. This is not how the grid has worked. Historically, transmission upgrades have been treated as shared infrastructure, with costs recovered through regional transmission rates spread across all ratepayers. Under the FERC model, existing ratepayers stop subsidizing new load. The rulemaking also proposes a 60-day expedited timeline for interconnection studies for 'curtailable' large loads that agree to be interruptible — they promise to accept being shut down if the grid is stressed. This is the carrot: faster access in exchange for reliability flexibility. The threshold for 'large load' is set at 20 MW in the proposal, though many stakeholders have argued for 50–100 MW. The higher the threshold, the fewer projects fall under federal jurisdiction. The lower it stays, the more state-level authority gets preempted.
Why now is a question of political timing and grid desperation. The grid's transmission bottleneck has become a ceiling on economic activity. Every major AI data center development is now constrained not by power availability but by interconnection timelines — sometimes five to seven years just to get permission to plug in. The Republican majority at FERC, newly seated, is aligned with the Secretary's directive. State utility commissioners and consumer advocates are not: NASUCA filed comments calling the expedited process 'patently unreasonable' and bad public policy; the National Conference of State Legislatures asked pointedly who bears responsibility if large loads strain an already strained power supply. These are not minor objections. They are constitutional territory — the Federal Power Act explicitly reserves retail load regulation to the states. FERC is arguing that transmission-level load interconnection is different from retail load, and therefore federal. The legal case has not been made cleanly, which is why the deadline matters. If FERC issues final action by April 30, opponents have limited time to challenge it in court before implementation. If FERC misses the deadline, the rulemaking falls into 2027, where it becomes subject to a new political climate and a full cycle of stakeholder warfare.
The data backdrop for this decision arrives April 8 — the EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2026 webinar. This is the first full AEO release since the EIA office faced 100-plus employee cuts under federal workforce reduction pressure. The AEO will contain the long-range load growth figures, data center demand projections, and capacity assumptions that directly inform whether the FERC rule is needed, oversized, or insufficient. The April 7 Short-Term Energy Outlook update will add Q1 2026 battery storage actuals and revised load forecasts. These numbers will be weaponized by both sides: proponents will cite data center growth to argue the rule cannot wait; opponents will cite grid stability concerns and state authority. The timing is not accidental. The Secretary's deadline forces FERC to move before full market visibility exists.
Here is what this actually means: FERC is attempting to create a two-tiered transmission system — federal for large loads, state for everyone else. The winners are clear: data center operators and large industrial users get predictable, faster interconnection and can appeal directly to federal regulators. Existing ratepayers in regions like PJM and ERCOT lose the cost-sharing model; they will see their transmission rates reflect less of the new load's upgrade costs. Regional transmission operators (RTOs) lose operational authority over who connects to their system. State utility commissioners lose jurisdiction. The Edison Electric Institute has already signaled support, which tells you utilities see margin recovery from higher transmission rates as a win. The losers are distributed and harder to mobilize: residential ratepayers in mature grids who will see transmission costs rise without corresponding local benefit, and state regulators whose authority FERC is usurping.
Our read: This rulemaking will issue on or before April 30 because the political alignment at FERC and the DOE makes it inevitable. The legal question — whether FERC actually has jurisdiction over load interconnection — will not be fully resolved in the final rule; it will be punted to the courts. What matters is that FERC will assert the authority and begin issuing orders before anyone can stop it. The rule's real consequence is not faster interconnection timelines, which depend on actual transmission construction (24 GW of battery storage planned for 2026 means nothing if the wires are not there). The consequence is the normalization of federal control over grid access for large loads. Once that precedent is set, expansion follows. In two years, we will know whether this accelerates grid modernization or simply creates a new litigation layer on top of the old bottleneck. What would change this view: if FERC misses the April 30 deadline — which would signal internal disagreement or a legal concern the agency is not ready to surface publicly; if the April 8 AEO load growth figures come in significantly below expectations, removing the urgency argument; or if a coalition of state utility commissioners wins an injunction before implementation.
Watch for: (1) April 7 EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook — Q1 2026 battery storage deployment numbers and updated load growth figures that directly inform FERC's rule. (2) April 8 EIA Annual Energy Outlook 2026 webinar — the full AEO will contain long-range data center demand projections and capacity assumptions; any significant downward revision to load growth would weaken the rulemaking's urgency. (3) April 30, 2026 — FERC's actual final action; watch whether it meets the deadline and whether it punts key questions (20 MW threshold, cost allocation details) to a second phase. (4) Mid-2026 PJM co-location paper hearing outcome — FERC's pending decision on PJM transmission tariff rates for colocation facilities will set pricing precedent for the most heavily loaded region in North America and signal how FERC intends to price large load access.