August 11, 2026 | Source: NERC — Large Loads Action Plan Q2 2026 Update (July 2026) and NERC Newsroom, "FERC Sets Year-End Deadline for NERC to Finalize Registry Criteria and Standards for Computational Loads"
NERC's Computational Load Standards Hit the Comment Period This Month
The response window on NERC's Level 3 Essential Action Alert closed on August 3.
That alert — Computational Load Modeling, Studies, Instrumentation, Commissioning, Operations, Protection, and Control — was issued May 4 and laid out seven actions registered entities must implement to address immediate risks from computational loads interfacing with the Bulk Power System. NERC issued it at Level 3 because it had observed customer-initiated large load reductions and significant oscillations occurring in seconds, leaving little or no room for real-time operator response.
Two more things land this month. NERC is posting the proposed computational load Reliability Standards for a 45-day comment period, and the second comment period on the revised Rules of Procedure Appendix 5B registry criteria is anticipated in August. FERC has directed NERC to finalize both the registry criteria and an initial Reliability Standard by the end of 2026, with final Board approval targeted for December.
What This Means in the Control Room and the Compliance Shop
The registry criteria are the piece to watch. NERC is defining, by specific physical and electrical characteristics, which computational load entities have to register and comply. If you have a hyperscale or crypto load in your footprint, some of your customers are about to become registered entities with obligations of their own — and your interconnection agreements, modeling data requests, and coordination procedures were probably not written for that.
For planners and modelers: the Load Modeling Working Group has been moving on the Data Center Load Modeling Technical Reference and the PERC2 model specification. Composite load models that treat a 300 MW data center like ordinary commercial load will not survive the next round of scrutiny. A two-day LMWG workshop is set for September 15–16.
For operators and RC/BA staff: the oscillation and voltage-sensitive load-reduction behavior driving the Level 3 alert is a real-time problem, not a study-year problem. Sub-second load rejection does not wait for a dispatcher. Instrumentation, ride-through expectations, and protection coordination at the point of interconnection are where the exposure sits — and the comment periods opening now are the last practical chance to shape what those requirements say before December.
EPG Solutions Can Help
Utilities trying to size their exposure to the large load buildout keep running into the same wall: no clean peer baseline for how comparable systems are handling interconnection queues, load modeling practice, and registration readiness. EPG's benchmark intelligence reports pull that comparison together from open regulatory and RTO data so you walk into your next planning meeting — or your next comment filing — with numbers instead of anecdotes.