FERC is pushing grid operators to create faster paths for large loads. The price may be flexibility when the system runs short.
New York has paused state environmental permits for new hyperscale data centers for up to one year. Twenty-six days earlier, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission had given six regional grid operators a different instruction: find a faster way to connect large loads.
Those actions look like opposing answers to the same power problem. They are closer than they first appear. Taken together, they show regulators putting the cost and reliability consequences of large loads ahead of unrestricted speed.
FERC's June 18 action is a set of show-cause orders, not a final national interconnection rule. The orders direct PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO New England and NYISO to defend their existing tariffs or propose changes within 60 days. The Commission identified five areas for possible reform, including study processes, protection against cost shifting, rules for co-located generation and new transmission services for flexible large loads. The orders cover data centers, manufacturing facilities and other large energy users. They also required each operator to submit generation and resource adequacy information within 30 days.
For AI infrastructure developers, the flexibility provision changes the trade between connection speed and firm service. FERC is not banning firm service, and it is not ordering data centers to accept interruption. The Commission is asking grid operators to consider both firm and non-firm services for loads willing to reduce their withdrawals under specified conditions, according to the SPP show-cause order. For developers that value time to power, flexibility may become the faster route.
Firm service remains available under the options FERC asked grid operators to evaluate, along with the conventional study and upgrade process needed to support it. Flexible service could provide an additional path for customers prepared to trade some certainty of supply for an earlier connection.
Commissioner David Rosner described the logic in operational terms. A load that agrees to non-firm service may reduce the network upgrades and generating capacity required before it connects, which can shorten the process and lower costs. He also argued that extending flexible service beyond co-located sites could reduce grid strain and consumer bills. Those are the Commissioner's claims, not settled outcomes. The regional filings still have to define the service, its curtailment rules and the safeguards around it.
In this model, the customer pays for earlier access by making its operations flexible and accepting lower-priority transmission service.
The power constraint is already shaping projects. SCN's review of the 100-gigawatt data center development pipeline, citing JLL's 2026 Global Data Center Outlook, showed how speculative requests, committed projects and grid bottlenecks had become tangled together. FERC's proposed reforms would favor loads ready to bear their connection costs, bring generation or accept interruption.
Among the regional approaches in FERC's June action, Southwest Power Pool's Conditional High Impact Large Load Service, or CHILLS, provides a concrete, approved example. FERC approved the tariff revisions on June 5, less than two weeks before the six show-cause orders.
CHILLS uses transmission capacity left after higher-priority firm reservations. The service can run for one to seven years while a customer secures resources or completes upgrades for long-term firm service. SPP can curtail it during transmission constraints, emergencies and other unforeseen conditions. FERC approved those core terms and gave CHILLS the same curtailment priority as monthly non-firm point-to-point transmission service.
CHILLS is an interim path toward firm power. It lets a large load start sooner if the operator can control what happens when the grid tightens. The customer still has to solve a harder engineering and commercial problem: how to keep useful work running when grid withdrawals fall.
For an AI or supercomputing facility, that problem reaches beyond the utility contract. Operators may have to decide which workloads can pause, what must stay online, how much local generation or storage they can support and whether a curtailment instruction can be absorbed without breaking service commitments. The answers will differ between a batch-oriented research system, an inference service and a long training run. A tariff can create the option. Facility design and workload orchestration determine whether the option is usable.
Denmark shows what happens when grid availability sets a hard limit. In March, Energinet paused new transmission-level connection agreements, and SCN later reported that grid availability, rather than demand for compute, was setting the pace of data center development. FERC is trying to give US operators another lever before a connection reaches a flat no.
Flexibility is only one of the five reform areas. FERC also wants clearer rules for data centers that sit beside generation or use behind-the-meter resources. The Commission's June action builds on its December 2025 PJM order, which required transparent tariff rules for loads co-located with generation.
Some projects have already tried to move faster than the regulatory process. SCN's reporting on xAI's use of dedicated gas turbines in Southaven, Mississippi, to support its Memphis-area AI infrastructure documented the collision between AI training schedules, local permitting and grid constraints. FERC's orders leave those local disputes untouched while bringing co-location and behind-the-meter generation into the transmission-service record.
Co-location also raises the question of who pays for grid upgrades. FERC is asking regional operators to disclose network upgrades associated with large loads and consider cost-recovery agreements intended to keep those costs with the customers that caused them. Commissioner Judy Chang described that two-part approach as public cost transparency paired with agreements that assign the risk of a project failing to appear.
The federal and state actions occupy different parts of the power system. FERC oversees interstate transmission and wholesale electricity sales. State agencies generally control retail service, siting and permitting under state-specific rules. The SPP order says the Commission's approach preserves that jurisdictional line, while the New York moratorium pauses state environmental permits as officials build a data center policy for ratepayers, water, the grid and host communities.
New York is willing to delay new projects while it sets terms. FERC wants regional markets to write terms that let suitable projects move sooner. In both cases, large loads face a test they did not face when spare grid capacity was easier to assume: prove that speed will not transfer reliability and infrastructure risk to everyone else.
The regional responses will decide whether flexible service becomes a practical route or a narrow tariff used by projects with unusual tolerance for interruption. Until the 60-day tariff responses arrive, FERC has set a direction rather than a national rule. Firm power remains available, but projects seeking an earlier connection may have to design around curtailment.
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