Sarah: FERC just stopped asking how PJM vets big loads and started asking who runs PJM at all.
Sarah: If you're just catching up: PJM's AI-load problem has already moved beyond forecast risk and into market design.
Sarah: The market monitor says data centers account for 6.3 billion dollars — 38 percent — of the latest capacity-auction charges.
Sarah: PJM's moving ahead with its CIFP-LLA framework
Sarah: while Monitoring Analytics keeps pushing generation-backed large loads or a separate backstop mechanism to cover them.
Matt: This is The Data Center Daily.
Matt: Today, FERC takes on PJM governance.
Matt: We've also got OpenAI's 20-billion-dollar Georgia build and Ohio quietly scrapping a rule.
Matt: Stick around — the receipts are ugly.
Sarah: Start with FERC and who actually controls the grid.
Matt: We're staying on PJM large-load integration plan — follow the show and you won't miss what comes next.
Sarah: From Laila Kearney at 95.7 KELO-FM:
Quote: NEW YORK, July 23 (Reuters) – U.S.
Quote: energy officials questioned PJM Interconnection’s power structure on Thursday as regulators weigh reforms to the country’s largest power
Quote: grid which faces the growing risk of blackouts as data center demand soars and little new electricity supply is added.
Sarah: FERC held a technical conference Thursday
Sarah: and the focus went straight to PJM's governance: should the board of managers be more independent of the utilities and power producers that
Sarah: vote on the rules? That's a different animal from the show-cause orders we've been tracking.
Sarah: Those focused on how PJM vets large loads.
Sarah: Now FERC's asking who actually runs the grid buckling under them.
Matt: Right — you've got a multilayered vote where transmission owners and plant operators help set the rules
Matt: then the board rubber-stamps them at the end.
Matt: That's the accountability black hole the senators were poking at Monday, except now FERC's naming the target out loud.
Matt: And it's not rhetorical anymore.
Matt: PJM's got something like twelve gigawatts of large load in the queue
Matt: on a grid serving 67 million people and the world's densest pile of data centers.
Matt: Make the board more independent, and you're changing the body that decides what clears.
Matt: So put the question there.
Sarah: The catch is, if FERC restructures PJM's governance, it also has to say who's accountable for the ratepayer bill that follows.
Sarah: We'll get to that dollar figure later this hour.
Matt: Yeah, because a reformed board that still greenlights the same trend line is just the old rubber stamp with a fresh org chart.
Sarah: Marshall Benveniste, writing in ConstructConnect:
Quote: OpenAI said it will invest $20 billion to launch Project Camellia in Effingham County
Quote: Ga. making the site one of the largest AI infrastructure projects now moving toward development in the Southeast.
Quote: The project’s 3.2-gigawatt power requirement
Quote: to be delivered in phases from 2028 to 2032
Quote: points to a multi-year construction cycle tied as much to grid and utility work as to the data center buildings themselves.
Sarah: The Georgia numbers haven't changed since we led with them — twenty billion
Sarah: 3.2 gigawatts into Effingham County
Sarah: phased from 2028 through 2032.
Sarah: The new piece is the role OpenAI's taking on: lead designer and developer.
Sarah: At this scale, it's the first time OpenAI's building its own compute instead of leasing it.
Sarah: And it comes the same week the Journal put OpenAI's spending through 2030 at around $750 billion, up from $600 billion earlier this year.
Matt: Lead designer and developer sounds great until you ask who eats the grid work.
Matt: Georgia Power's handling the utility buildout for a 3.2-gigawatt ramp, and that ramp runs to 2032.
Matt: I want this on the record: if OpenAI flexes load in the first hot August, who backstops the capacity Georgia Power already priced in?
Matt: It's the same accountability fight FERC just opened around PJM, playing out in a different state.
Sarah: Here's Marin Holt at MGRID:
Quote: Data centers accounted for $6.3 billion
Quote: or 38% of the $16.4 billion in charges from PJM Interconnection’s most recent capacity auction
Quote: Joseph Bowring president of the grid operator’s independent market monitor
Quote: said in an email to Utility Dive reported on July 20
Quote: 2026 as PJM prepares to file a capacity backstop proposal with federal regulators.
Sarah: Now we have the per-auction breakdown.
Sarah: Bowring's monitor puts data centers at $6.3 billion of the latest $16.4 billion capacity auction — 38%.
Matt: And 38% is the low read.
Matt: Across four auctions, data centers account for $29.4 billion out of $63.6 billion — 46%.
Matt: So the latest number is a dip.
Sarah: A dip, and one customer class is still eating almost half of what the whole region paid to keep the lights on.
Matt: Tie that back to the FERC piece we just hit — regulators questioning who actually runs PJM.
Matt: If FERC reforms the board, does that $6.3 billion line bend, or does a shiny new board rubber-stamp it too?
Sarah: PJM's also filing a capacity backstop proposal.
Sarah: The stakeholder version calls for an auction covering roughly 6.8 gigawatts as soon as September, with a $555-per-MW-day cost cap.
Matt: A cap on the thing that already accounts for 46% of the bill.
Matt: I'll believe in the cap when I see who's on the hook if it breaks.
Sarah: From Jess Huff at The Texas Tribune:
Quote: A controversial data center project in East Texas is no longer moving forward after the company said it wouldn’t be able to comply with Gov.
Quote: Greg Abbott’s development standards.
Quote: Kansas-based Diode Ventures had proposed building a data center in Henderson County near Cedar Creek Reservoir
Quote: a historic waterway in a community heavily involved in water conservation.
Sarah: Diode Ventures is out of Henderson County.
Sarah: The East Texas project is officially withdrawn.
Sarah: The company's stated reason: it couldn't meet Abbott's development standards.
Matt: Five million gallons of lake water a day by year five
Matt: pulled from Cedar Creek Reservoir for a site in a subdivision
Matt: in a community heavily involved in water conservation.
Matt: That's damn near two billion gallons a year from a lake that's already running low.
Sarah: And it'd take a twelve-year buildout to get there.
Sarah: The withdrawal leaves the water question hanging.
Matt: The standards worked as a filter here.
Matt: A Kansas outfit looked at Abbott's rules, did the lake math, and walked.
Matt: Compare that with PJM: sometimes the check comes from a governance board; sometimes it's a country road full of homeowners who read the
Matt: withdrawal permit.
Sarah: Here's Farm and Dairy:
Quote: SALEM
Quote: Ohio — The Ohio Environmental Protection Agency scrapped a proposed statewide general permit on July 21 that would’ve allowed data centers
Quote: to discharge wastewater into local waterways.
Quote: The agency dismissed the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System general permit “after carefully reviewing the significant volume of
Quote: public comments received on the draft” — over 7,000.
Sarah: Ohio EPA killed the general discharge permit on Monday — the statewide shortcut that would've let data centers dump wastewater without
Sarah: measuring chemicals before discharge and with only a single public comment window.
Sarah: It's dead. Seven thousand comments will do that.
Sarah: We flagged individual NPDES permits as the path on Tuesday, and now the agency has closed the door on the blanket version.
Matt: No chemical testing before it hits the waterway, one public hearing for every data center that ever gets built?
Matt: Yeah, no — glad that one's in the ground.
Matt: And look at this week: Ohio EPA won't rubber-stamp discharge, and FERC's questioning who even runs PJM.
Matt: Both are making somebody prove the case project by project.
Host: If you follow the infrastructure powering AI
Host: check out Anthropic Pentagon Watch
Host: a daily briefing on Anthropic’s fight with the DoD over Claude
Host: military AI use autonomous weapons
Host: and procurement blacklisting.
Host: Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
Host: Next we're watching PJM’s capacity backstop proposal
Host: a concrete market-design checkpoint with about 6.8 gigawatts potentially in scope as soon as September 2026.
Host: You’ll find links to every story in today’s show notes if you want to spend more time with any of them.
Host: That’s The Data Center Daily for this Friday.
Host: This is a Lantern Podcast.