PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that runs wholesale power markets across 13 Mid-Atlantic and Midwest states, filed at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC, which regulates interstate electricity transmission) on 31 July under docket ER26-3380-000. The filing bundles the Reliability Backstop Procurement we covered with an Interim Resource Adequacy Service (IRAS), which makes loads of 50 MW and above curtailable as a condition of connection from 1 June 2027 unless they bring their own capacity. The Federal Register notice opening comment published on 4 August, comments close at 5pm Eastern on 21 August, and PJM asks for an effective date of 29 September 1.
PJM's capacity auction fell 6,623 MW short in July . That shortfall is the arithmetic sitting under both halves of the docket: one half procures backstop capacity, the other reduces the load the system has to guarantee.
Draw a line no source draws. IRAS writes curtailability into the terms of connection and stays there until FERC changes it, a market rule of indefinite duration. The Department of Energy's Section 202(c) grant to PJM, which let the operator cut backup-equipped data centres during a heat event, ran as an emergency order under statute, temporary and exceptional by design. Different instrument, different authority, different permanence.
For a developer, the practical consequence lands in the financing model rather than in the engineering. A load that accepts IRAS accepts curtailment as its ordinary condition of service, which changes the availability assumption a lender underwrites, and the escape route, bringing your own capacity, means generation on site or contracted firm supply. Comments close before the operator can know how many will take it.
