June 3, 2026 | Source: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Docket No. RM26-4-000 (Order Regarding Intent to Act, April 16, 2026); NERC Level 3 Alert on Computational Loads (May 4, 2026)
FERC's Large Load Ruling Is Due This Month: The Clock Is Running on RM26-4
We are now inside the window. On April 16, 2026, FERC issued an Order Regarding Intent to Act committing the Commission to take action by the end of June 2026 in Docket No. RM26-4-000 — the rulemaking on interconnection of large electrical loads to the interstate transmission system.
The proceeding began in October 2025, when the Department of Energy directed FERC to open an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on integrating large loads — data centers chief among them. Commission staff have since worked through more than 3,500 pages of comments. The open questions are consequential: whether large loads should move through interconnection studies in as little as 60 days, and whether they should bear the full cost of grid upgrades their interconnection requires.
This lands on top of NERC's May 4 Level 3 Essential Actions Alert — only the third in NERC's history — issued after repeated events where more than 1,000 MW of computational load dropped off the bulk power system in seconds. Registered entity responses to that alert are due August 3, 2026.
What June Means for Operators and Planners
For transmission planners and interconnection staff, whatever FERC issues this month becomes the framework you will study, comment on, and eventually implement. If 60-day study timelines survive into a proposed rule, study queues and modeling assumptions built for multi-year processes will need rework.
For reliability coordinators and operators, the FERC docket and the NERC alert are the same problem in two venues: large loads that connect fast and disconnect faster. The seven essential actions in the Level 3 alert — and the data those responses generate by August 3 — will feed directly into NERC's Project 2026-02 standards development on computational loads.
Compliance teams should treat this as one workstream, not three. The FERC action, the alert response, and the pending standards project all pull from the same underlying facts about your system: load ride-through behavior, voltage sensitivity, and study assumptions. Get that record straight once.
EPG Solutions Can Help
When the rule drops this month, the entities that respond fastest will be the ones who already know where they stand against their peers on interconnection timelines, large load exposure, and study practices. EPG Solutions' proprietary benchmark intelligence reports give utilities exactly that baseline — before the comment deadlines start stacking up. Visit EPG Solutions → epgsolutions.services