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To assist the Ohio Public Utilities Commission with its review of  AEP’s application and request for interim relief , the administrative law judge (ALJ) issued an entry scheduling a technical conference to be held on March 19, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. at the offices of the Commission, 180 East Broad Street, 11th floor, Hearing Room 11-B, Columbus, Ohio 43215.

As reported previously, on February 6, 2026, AEP Ohio filed an application and proposed tariff for Standard Service Offer (SSO) customers that included an enhanced competitive bidding process with an aim towards trying to limit the costs associated with procuring more capacity to handle large loads such as data centers customers.

In its application AEP Ohio identified seven principles to guide its proposed cooperative process in finalizing its large load tariff filing.

Moreover, as reported previously AEP Ohio requested that provisions five through seven be implemented on an interim basis. Those guiding principles are provided below.

1. Data center customers should pay for the generation costs they are causing during any period they rely on the SSO.
2. Non-data center SSO customers should not pay for the generation costs driven by data center customers.
3. Competitive retail energy supply (CRES) providers should be the load serving entity (LSE) that are assigned RBA costs for any period of time they are supplying competitive generation service to the underlying data center load. To the extent AEP Ohio is required to provide SSO generation supply to data centers and is considered the LSE during that period, the steps below are to be followed.
4. The multi-year RBA price would follow the data center megawatts (MWs) being served – from CRES provider to CRES provider or to the SSO (i.e., data centers that do not provide their own generation and, instead, elect to rely on RBA generation resources should pay the resulting RBA price assigned to the LSE for the full term of the generation commitment, regardless of whether they shop and with whom they shop, including any period of relying on the SSO).
5. If the RBA price does not follow the data center customer MWs when they return to the SSO, a separate procurement or auction product should be procured for data center load being served by the SSO (i.e., so that the data centers can pay the full price of their procurement without impacting the regular SSO price). 26-113-EL-ATA -3 –
6. Data center customers should provide 180 days advance notice to AEP Ohio prior to returning to the SSO, in order to implement solutions being provided in a timely manner.If the data center does not provide sufficient advance notice before returning to the SSO, spot market purchases will be made during any period that a separate SSO auction/product can be conducted to serve data center load.
7. If the data center does not provide sufficient advance notice before returning to the SSO, spot market purchases will be made during any period that a separate SSO auction/product can be conducted to serve data center load.