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Advocates: out-of-state data-center growth is driving PJM capacity and transmission costs
Summary
Consumer advocates told the county committee that rapid data-center load growth in neighboring PJM zones has raised capacity and transmission costs; advocates urged PJM and FERC action and said state tariffs may be needed so data centers bear more of the cost they impose.
David Lapp of the Maryland People's Council told the committee that hyperscale data centers are a major near-term driver of capacity and transmission costs in the PJM region. Lapp cited PJM estimates that data centers have driven up capacity-market costs by billions in recent auctions and warned that Maryland customers should not "be incurring costs to these data centers."
Lapp and PSC representatives described ongoing efforts at PJM and FERC to allocate costs more closely to the zones where load growth occurs and to require data centers to pay their "full freight." The PSC and other state regulators are pursuing both federal litigation and state-level tariff development to limit rate impacts on Maryland residential customers, they said. Committee members asked about the trade-offs of allocating costs to the data-center jurisdiction versus limiting the data centers' use of regional transmission capacity; panelists said solutions will require federal, regional and state coordination.
