FERC meets on PJM the same day Trump widens a data-center power pledge

FERC, the federal energy regulator, opens a Thursday meeting on the PJM grid, the largest U.S. regional network serving 67 million people, while President Trump unveils an expanded Ratepayer Protection Pledge asking data center builders to pay above-normal rates so households do not subsidize AI demand. The two events land on the same day. Only one of them has a real lever.

The pledge, which Trump is scheduled to announce with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, is voluntary. First signed in March 2026 with a smaller set of governors and utilities, the expanded version now covers roughly 80 percent of all power delivered to U.S. homes and businesses, according to a White House official. It commits signers, including data center developers, utilities, and several state governors, to structure future large-load contracts so that the biggest electricity users pay rates above what residential customers would otherwise shoulder.

The structural weight sits at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, where commissioners convene Thursday on PJM Interconnection, the regional grid operator that runs the wholesale power market across 13 mid-Atlantic and Midwest states. Last week's annual PJM capacity auction cleared at record prices. PJM's transmission congestion costs, the gap between scheduled and actual power flows that gets paid by every load-serving entity in the footprint, jumped 81 percent in 2025 to $3.2 billion (Reuters via The Star).

The 81 percent number is the load-bearing one. PJM is the only U.S. regional market whose 2025 congestion bill was both larger than the year before and tied to a queue dominated by data center interconnection requests. A residential customer in Maryland or New Jersey does not see a line item for congestion. They see a delivered rate that already includes it. If FERC's Thursday meeting produces a price floor, a capacity accreditation reform, or a tariff change that re-prices where new load sits on the grid, that re-prices the household bill before any White House pledge takes effect.

The pledge, by contrast, has no enforcement teeth. It is a coordination device, a way for the administration to put a public signature next to a cost-allocation principle it wants states and utilities to follow when they negotiate with hyperscalers, the cloud and AI companies running the biggest data center campuses. Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute, said the pledge tries to fit a "one-size-fits-all" grid model onto a problem that is regional, and noted that large customers can already wait a decade or longer for new service because of transmission siting and generator retirement timelines.

Data center industry advocates counter that the buildout is finally pulling in long-overdue transmission and generation investment, and that power-plant retirements and existing transmission constraints are doing more to push rates up than AI load alone. The read is defensible. It also does not answer the question on FERC's docket Thursday: when a new data center campus requests interconnection in northern Virginia, who pays for the upgraded line, and on what schedule.

The White House ceremony sets a political signal: the administration wants the AI buildout to pay its way, and it wants voters in PJM states, the most exposure-heavy in the country, to see that signal. FERC's meeting is the procedural one: the agency that actually approves regional tariff changes and capacity market rules convenes on the grid where those changes would matter first. If FERC acts, the pledge is a footnote. If FERC does not, the pledge is politics.

The pledge covers roughly 80 percent of U.S. electricity delivery, a figure the White House confirmed Wednesday. PJM's 2025 congestion figure is an annual number; a 2026 update from the grid operator would reset the math. FERC's meeting begins Thursday at 10 a.m. Eastern.