{"id":181080,"date":"2026-05-01T10:35:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T10:35:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/181080\/"},"modified":"2026-05-01T10:35:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T10:35:07","slug":"puc-aims-to-protect-people-from-data-center-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/181080\/","title":{"rendered":"PUC aims to protect people from data center demand"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission on Thursday advanced guidance for when energy companies connect high-demand electric users such as data centers.\n<\/p>\n

The acceleration of artificial intelligence has boosted demand for energy-hungry data centers, requiring more power at a faster rate than typical internet activities.\n<\/p>\n

PJM Interconnection, which manages the region\u2019s electrical grid, has pointed to the increase in data centers<\/a> as a reason for increased demand leading to higher electricity bills.\n <\/p>\n

The commission\u2019s proposed model tariff, which provides recommendations rather than regulations, aims to ensure data centers and other large energy users can connect to the grid quickly, while protecting rate payers from higher electricity bills.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI have said on several occasions, we are at a critical juncture for our electrical grid,\u201d said PUC chairman Stephen DeFrank during Thursday\u2019s hearing. \u201cData centers and advanced manufacturing are causing explosive load growth that our system has not seen in generations. Without clear rules and protections, however, generations of Pennsylvanians can be burdened by the cost of abandoned or unused infrastructure.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Rates for generation \u2014 the supply of energy to homes \u2014\u00a0 increased residential bills by 10 to 20% during parts of last year, driven by capacity costs set by grid operator PJM Interconnection.\n<\/p>\n

The effects are evident in Pennsylvania, where utility shutoffs increased by 21%<\/a> last year, leaving ratepayers in the dark.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are already paying in the neighborhood of a billion dollars more this year in generation costs as a result of that increase in capacity, which is directly attributed to the load growth from data centers,\u201d said Elizabeth Marx, executive director of the Pennsylvania Utility Law Project.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing forward, we\u2019re anticipating that as the systems are built out to serve this large load, there is a real risk that the transmission lines to deliver the energy to data centers, the distribution system upgrades necessary to handle that level of load growth in a short period of time, could seep their way into residential rates or small business rates, making energy more unaffordable than it already is.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

\u2018The devil\u2019s \u2026 in the details\u2019\n<\/p>\n

The PUC\u2019s proposed model tariff defines large load customers as those that require more than 50 megawatts individually or 100 megawatts in the aggregate \u2013 equivalent to powering about 10,000 to 100,000 homes.\n<\/p>\n

The recommendations include issuing fees for developers that terminate their contracts before electrical distribution companies recover the cost of investments. This would protect customers from paying for projects that never get built.\n<\/p>\n

The guidance also calls for contributions from large-load customers to universal service programs that assist ratepayers struggling to pay their bills.\n<\/p>\n

During the hearing, the PUC approved two new amendments introduced by DeFrank that aim to further protect ratepayers. One amendment affirms that large load customers should be permitted to construct their own infrastructure upgrades when feasible to prevent costs from being passed on to ratepayers.\n<\/p>\n

Another amendment recommends electric distribution companies recover all transmission and distribution costs necessary to interconnect the large-load customers, except for any upgrades or additions that were already planned by the electric distribution company before the large-load customer requested service. Currently, infrastructure costs are paid for by all ratepayers \u2014 including households, small businesses and corporations \u2014 which has led to increased bills.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe devil\u2019s going to be in the details,\u201d said PUC Vice Chair Kimberly Barrow during the hearing. \u201cI want to encourage our [electric distribution companies] to be bold in crafting the rules that will offer more complete solutions to the challenges that we\u2019re facing in the PJM region and in this commonwealth.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181081,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2116,28,30,29,9962],"class_list":["post-181080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-data-centers","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news","tag-pennsylvania-public-utility-commission"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}