August 8, 2026 | Sources: FERC show cause orders, Docket Nos. EL26-67-000 through EL26-72-000 (issued June 18, 2026) and NERC Level 3 Alert, "Essential Action to Industry — Computational Load Modeling, Studies, Instrumentation, Commissioning, Operations, Protection, and Control"
FERC's 60-Day Clock on Large Load Tariffs Runs Out This Month
On June 18, 2026, FERC issued tailored show cause orders under section 206 of the Federal Power Act to all six RTOs and ISOs under its jurisdiction — PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO-NE, and NYISO.
Each grid operator and its transmission owners have 60 days to either justify why their existing tariffs remain just and reasonable without provisions tailored to large loads, or file tariff changes. That window closes in mid-August.
The orders tee up five categories of reform: transmission service application and study processes, cost-shift prevention and cost transparency, co-location and behind-the-meter generation, new transmission services for flexible large loads, and a study process for generation serving electrically proximate and co-located load.
Separately, each operator was required within 30 days to file an informational report describing how it will ensure adequate generation is available to serve existing and new large loads.
What This Means in the Control Room and the Compliance Shop
Whatever gets filed this month becomes the tariff language your interconnection queue, your study assumptions, and your operating agreements inherit. The comment and order cycle that follows is where the practical details get set — curtailment obligations for flexible load, co-location metering, who pays for what.
The reliability side is already moving. NERC's Level 3 Alert on computational loads — initially distributed May 4, 2026 — carried a reporting deadline of August 3, 2026, for TPs, PCs, TOs, BAs, RCs, and TOPs. Those responses are in, and NERC aggregates them for FERC under Rule 810.
Read the seven Essential Actions again with an operating lens. Essential Action 7 puts it plainly: TOPs, RCs, and BAs should establish Interpersonal Communication capability with computational loads and joint operating procedures for planned and emergency conditions. If you cannot pick up a line and reach a 300 MW data center at 0200, that gap is now documented.
Essential Action 2 asks planners to identify credible contingencies where aggregate loss or reduction of computational load causes planning criteria violations — including customer-initiated reductions — and to communicate that MW quantity to Balancing Authorities and Resource Planners. That number belongs in your operating awareness, not just a planning file.
FERC has also directed NERC to finalize registry criteria and initial Reliability Standards for computational loads by the end of 2026. The draft criteria currently contemplate loads 20 MW and greater, connected at 60 kV, with more than 1 MW of IT load. Project 2026-02 is developing the standards behind it.
EPG Solutions Can Help
When registry criteria become mandatory standards, control room staff need to know what a computational load entity is, why ride-through and ramp rate matter at the point of common coupling, and what an RC is expected to do when one of them drops 300 MW without warning. GridCert RC training is built for exactly that — real operating context, taught by people who have worked the desk, not a slide deck written from the standard's table of contents.