FirstEnergy is urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to require data centers to pay for transmission upgrades needed to bring them online instead of spreading those costs across existing customers as is current practice.
“FirstEnergy is recommending a rate-design framework requiring the customer driving the expansion to bear the associated costs while leaving the remainder of the system unaffected,” said Jennifer Young, manager of corporate communications for Akron, Ohio-based FirstEnergy.
Utility Dive reported that the proposal faced pushback from Maven Solutions, an Austin, Texas-based consulting firm describing itself as “a fully remote, global technology company specializing in custom software, enterprise solutions, and IT consulting.”
However, Young said, what it asks of FERC “would protect households from unforeseen cost shifts, provide data center developers with predictable and financeable cost structures, and preserve the conditions necessary to build the transmission infrastructure the nation urgently requires.”
Utility Dive reported that FirstEnergy made its proposal as part of FERC’s consideration of possible rules for interconnecting data centers and other large loads to the transmission system. Cost allocation is one of the issues FERC is expected to tackle in that decision, which could be voted on at its June 18 open meeting.
