Feature Articles

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) initiated a show cause proceeding in June to ensure the tariff remains just and reasonable under the Federal Power Act. Other central grid operators face the same mandate.

FERC said New England may have so few large loads because of the lack of a clear and consistent process in its tariff.

“The record indicates that there have been, and there is potential for an increase in, requests for transmission service by eligible customers on behalf of large loads,” the commission said.

Victoria Rojo, supervisor of load forecasting for the ISO, told a public meeting last month that while New England is not seeing an explosion of data centers, the grid operator is closely monitoring their potential.

“Our current long term load forecast is minimal and only has a handful of projects,” she told a consumer liaison panel. “The near-term impact is minimal, and out over the longer term, the maximum demand is 130 MW on peak and 1000 GWh of energy.”

These projects are not expected to have any effect on overall system demand before the winter of 2027-2028, Rojo said.

FERC had many critiques of the tariff for large loads, which it wants to define as having a peak load of 50 MW or greater, an interconnect greater than 69 kV and is not part of a co-location arrangement.

Among the purported shortcomings were:

• ISO New England’s tariff does not require transmission owners to install, and transmission customers to pay for, equipment to monitor large loads.
• The ISO does not specify requirements for control technologies or protection systems to limit a transmission customer’s withdrawals from the system.
• The tariff does not require the transmission customer to enable the ISO to remotely disconnect large loads when necessary to maintain reliability.
• The tariff fails to deter speculative or duplicative requests for transmission service for large loads.
• Ramp rate or ride-through requirements with which the transmission customer taking transmission service on behalf of the large load must comply are not specified.

The commission also focused on a lack of adequate mechanisms to mitigate the risk of cost shifting among transmission customers.

FERC said that the ISO, the transmission owner and the customer taking transmission service on behalf of a large load should enter into a cost recovery agreement for the customer to make a minimum contribution toward the transmission owner’s transmission revenue requirement.

Additionally, FERC said the tariff should recognize the reduced system impacts that may result from the interconnection of a generating facility where the customer has committed to limit the generator’s output “to match the hourly forecast of an electrically proximate large load or large co-located load.”

The grid operator did not respond to each critique, and instead offered two proposals in a July 20 filing to avoid cost-shifts and adverse reliability risks.

One is an effort to allow transmission customers serving large loads to receive energy until sufficient designated resources and network upgrades are in place, subject to flexibility requirements or curtailment and interruption.

ISO New England said that this treatment is justified by the size of these loads and the

potential adverse impact on reliability if generation was lacking to serve them. The proposed rules would be similar to the Southwest Power Pool’s conditional high impact large load service rules.

The grid operator also intends to exclude large loads from the capacity market, which will complement a proposed requirement for them to bring their own new generation. The ISO said it will file detailed rules with FERC implementing this concept in 2027.

The ISO is evaluating reforms to its surplus interconnection service to accommodate interconnection requests that do not increase the type or level of service at a given point.  The grid operator plans to present a surplus gap analysis, followed by design concepts, to stakeholders later this year.

FERC told the ISO and transmission owners to respond to the show cause order by August 17. The grid operator asked for an abeyance until November 16 to allow for a stakeholder process.

One tech executive said he expects the ISO to integrate large loads into its existing capacity frameworks.

“New England’s transmission limits, environmental siting constraints and congested local networks mean the ISO will emphasize interconnection studies, transmission upgrades and distribution coordination,” said Pavankumar Kamat, CEO of Panto AI, which provides quality assurance for mobile device applications.

Kamat expects the grid operator to propose clearer forecasting obligations for large loads, tighter interconnection and capacity accreditation rules and explicit cost allocation mechanisms.

“Those will determine whether large loads are absorbed smoothly or force local reliability investments,” he told MAGNIFYI.

The number of extant data centers in the region is debatable. Datacentermap.com lists 126 data centers in the New England states, while Cleanview.co lists eight existing data centers and seven planned.

A high count may reflect older and smaller government and university data center sites.

A Massachusetts environmental group, the Berkshire Environmental Action Team, said at the ISO’s consumer liaison meeting last month that five data centers are currently proposed in New England.

The combined load of any two of those projects would outstrip the 130 MW embedded in the ISO’s formal planning process.

Eversource Energy CEO Joe Nolan said on a May 7 earnings call that he is not interested in the development of data centers in the company’s service territory because of the cost burden to other customers.

The distributor serves much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Connecticut.