August 24, 2026 | Source: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Docket Nos. EL26-67 through EL26-72 (Show Cause Orders)
FERC's Large Load Deadline Has Passed: What Six Grid Operators Just Told the Commission
On June 18, 2026, FERC issued six parallel Section 206 show cause orders — one to each FERC-jurisdictional RTO/ISO: PJM (Docket EL26-67), SPP (EL26-68), NYISO (EL26-69), MISO (EL26-70), CAISO (EL26-71), and ISO New England (EL26-72).
Each order preliminarily found that the region's existing tariff is unjust and unreasonable because it fails to adequately address how large loads — data centers, AI training facilities, advanced manufacturing — interconnect to and are served by the transmission system.
The response deadline was August 17, 2026. Each grid operator and its transmission owners had to either justify the status quo or file tariff revisions addressing FERC's five reform categories: transmission service and study rules for large loads, cost-shift safeguards, co-location and behind-the-meter generation rules, flexible-load transmission products, and pathways to study generation alongside electrically proximate large load. Operators could also request a 90-day abeyance if they filed that request by August 3.
What This Means for Operators and Compliance Teams
This is not a single national rule. FERC deliberately ran six separate dockets so each region could shape reforms around its own market design and existing large-load procedures.
PJM and SPP walked into the deadline already ahead — PJM's RBP mechanism and Expedited Interconnection Track, and SPP's CHILLS framework (effective July 1), gave them a head start on demonstrating compliance rather than building from scratch. MISO and NYISO were still working reforms through stakeholder process, with MISO's large-load generator interconnection agreement filing tracking close behind the deadline.
For transmission planners, this matters beyond the data-center headlines. The reform categories FERC laid out — cost allocation safeguards, co-location and BTMG treatment, flexible-load products — will shape interconnection study queues, resource adequacy assumptions, and tariff filings across every region for the next planning cycle. If your utility interconnects behind an RTO/ISO named in these dockets, the terms your large-load customers get in 2027 are being written right now in these filings.
Compliance teams should also note the overlap with NERC's Level 3 Essential Action Alert on computational load modeling, which had its own industry response deadline of August 3. Large-load reliability is being addressed on two fronts simultaneously — FERC's market/tariff side and NERC's operating/planning side — and the two will need to reconcile.
EPG Solutions Can Help
Tracking six parallel FERC dockets alongside NERC's computational load alert is exactly the kind of cross-cutting compliance exposure our benchmark intelligence reports are built to surface — mapping where your utility's current interconnection and planning practices stand against what regulators are now requiring. Visit EPG Solutions → epgsolutions.services