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The Grid

The Grid’s Referee Votes on Rules for Data Centers

NERC votes today on reliability standards for data centers of 50 megawatts or more connected at 100 kilovolts or above, which would bind them to grid operators’ instructions.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 26 — The board of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, or NERC, which writes and enforces mandatory reliability standards for North America’s bulk power grid, votes this afternoon on the first such standards written for data centers. If its trustees adopt them, sites with 50 megawatts or more of connected load, supplied at 100 kilovolts or above, would come under rules on how they connect, what data they hand over and how they answer grid operators’ instructions.

The trustees meet online from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Eastern to take up three new standards, CLO-001-1, CLO-002-1 and CLO-003-1, and conforming revisions to two existing ones on interconnection.Computational Load SiteNERC’s proposed term for one or more buildings at a single location that mainly house computers used for “artificial intelligence training, deployment, and delivery,” “cryptocurrency mining,” software services or “other computational activities at a data center,” and supplied from the bulk power system. Power-plant owners that connect such a site have duties too. NERC’s stakeholders approved the new standards in a final ballot that closed Oct. 14, by 82.33, 78.13 and 82.69 percent, and the revisions by 95.51 percent.

Together with registry criteria the board approved on Oct. 8, the standards would make the owners and operators of large data centers and crypto mines entities registered with NERC, bound to follow grid operators’ instructions, supply models of their sites and record disturbances. The criteria are to be filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, this month, and NERC expects to begin registering the new entities in 2027.

A site’s operator would have to comply with each operating instruction from its transmission operator, balancing authority or reliability coordinator unless the instruction cannot physically be carried out or would violate safety, equipment, regulatory or statutory requirements. Owners would have to give planners data on how their sites trip, ride through and recover from disturbances. Whoever owns the main transformer feeding a site would have to record faults and disturbances there, with clocks kept within a millisecond of universal time, and hand over recordings within 15 days of a request.

The reason is load that drops off without warning. On July 10, 2024, during a string of faults on a 230-kilovolt line in the Eastern Interconnection, about 1,500 megawatts of load disconnected itself, all of it data-center-type load, NERC’s incident review found.The 1,500 MegawattsA failed lightning arrestor set off six faults in 82 seconds as the line tried to reclose. No utility equipment cut the load; the customers’ own protection and controls did. Frequency peaked at 60.047 hertz, and operators switched out capacitor banks to bring voltage down. In its July 16 order directing NERC to write the standards, FERC said NERC had “documented multiple grid disturbances in which computational loads have caused or contributed to the instability of the Bulk-Power System.”

The main objection, from prospective owners and operators, was uncertainty. They sought “greater certainty on how registration will work under various facility or contractual configurations,” NERC’s board papers say, and the standard on operations, CLO-002-1, drew the narrowest approval. NERC offers possible extensions on some deadlines for owners with sites in service within 12 months of the effective date, and a pledge: it “plans to judiciously exercise its enforcement discretion where new registrants are making good efforts to comply with requirements.”

If the board adopts the standards, NERC will file them with federal regulators, who ordered them by Dec. 31. CLO-001-1 and CLO-002-1 would take effect on the first day of the first calendar quarter after regulatory approval, with compliance phased in over nine and 12 months.

The bill for the power is being written as well. PJM Interconnection, which runs the grid for 13 states and the District of Columbia, plans to file on Thursday its revised proposal to charge its backstop purchase of new capacity to zones by their growth in large loads, as this paper reported on Oct. 21. Its Oct. 22 slides propose that the utilities and suppliers serving those zones post collateral equal, in PJM’s example, to 3.4 years of payments, at an assumed weighted-average price of $555 a megawatt-day; the July auction cleared at its $325 cap. One that leaves PJM would remain responsible for the rest of its charges, subject to a rate filing at FERC.

On these documents, owners of large data centers would take on models to supply, disturbance data to record and evidence to keep for audit, and PJM’s zones with large-load growth would share the backstop’s cost in proportion to it. NERC’s drafting team said it found no comments showing the standards would not be a cost-effective way to meet FERC’s directive. In this paper’s reading, makers of fault and disturbance recorders stand to gain. After this afternoon’s vote come PJM’s filing on Thursday and, if the standards pass, NERC’s filing at FERC by Dec. 31.

Sources

  1. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “Careers (“Our headquarters are in Washington, D.C.”).”
  2. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “Board of Trustees Open Meeting, agenda package (Agenda Item 1: Project 2026-02 Computational Loads),” Oct. 26, 2026.
  3. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “CLO-001-1 – Computational Load Interconnection, Studies, & Modeling Data (final draft).”
  4. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “CLO-002-1 – Computational Load Operational Data and Communications (final draft).”
  5. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “CLO-003-1 – Computational Load Protection Coordination & Disturbance Monitoring (final draft).”
  6. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “Implementation Plan, CLO-001-1, FAC-001-5 and FAC-002-5.”
  7. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “Implementation Plan, CLO-002-1.”
  8. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, “Order Directing NERC to File Reliability Standard(s) Pertaining to Computational Load Integration, 196 FERC ¶ 61,031 (Docket No. RD26-7-000),” July 16, 2026.
  9. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “Incident Review: Considering Simultaneous Voltage-Sensitive Load Reductions,” Jan. 8, 2025.
  10. North American Electric Reliability Corporation, “NERC Primer for Computational Loads.”
  11. Utility Dive, “Reliability standards for AI data centers, crypto miners move closer to adoption,” Oct. 15, 2026.
  12. PJM Interconnection, “Tariff, Section 9.2(b) Stakeholder Consultation of Upcoming 205 Filing on Reliability Backstop Procurement (Special Members Committee presentation),” Oct. 22, 2026.
  13. PJM Interconnection, “PJM Capacity Auction Procures 138,318 MW of Generation Resources as Work Continues To Address Growing Electricity Demand,” July 14, 2026.