Sponsors (9)
The bill shifts more of the costs and planning responsibility for large data‑center connections onto data centers and clarifies federal/state roles—improving grid planning and protecting typical ratepayers, but raising costs, delays, and regulatory complexity that could slow projects and concentrate impacts regionally.
Households and small businesses are less likely to subsidize data-center-driven local grid upgrades because the bill requires data centers to pay for incremental transmission/distribution upgrades or face interconnection limits.
Utilities, grid operators, and communities get more reliable planning and resilience because the bill clarifies interconnection rules, creates paths for data center–funded batteries and load‑flexibility agreements, and improves long‑term load forecasts.
Data centers, developers, and regulators gain regulatory clarity and faster decision timelines through defined terms, FERC/state deadlines, and federal technical assistance that reduce interconnection uncertainty.
Data center owners and their customers face materially higher upfront and ongoing charges (deposits, CIACs, demand charges, labor requirements), which will raise operating costs, may be passed through to digital‑service customers, and could deter new investment.
Planned data center projects could be delayed, limited, or denied and data centers may be prioritized for interruption, which can slow local job creation and concentrate outage risk on hosted services and nonresidential customers.
The bill imposes new federal and state requirements, deadlines, and rate‑class designs that increase regulatory complexity and administrative burdens for utilities and regulators and risk rushed FERC/state actions, litigation, or implementation errors.
Based on analysis of 8 sections of legislative text.
Makes data centers pay allocated local grid upgrade costs, requires FERC/state rules for data‑center load queues, prioritizes clean energy and labor standards, and funds DOE technical assistance.
Introduced January 15, 2026 by Christopher Van Hollen · Last progress January 15, 2026
Requires federal and state electricity regulators to prevent ordinary ratepayers from subsidizing the power needs of large data centers. It directs FERC to make grid operators create data-center-specific load queues and standards that prioritize projects that bring low- or no-carbon supply, storage, labor standards, and interruptible agreements; orders utilities to allocate local transmission upgrade costs to the interconnecting data center; instructs states to consider dedicated retail rate classes for data centers; and funds DOE technical assistance and grants to help implement the changes. Imposes deadlines for agency action (mostly 120–180 days) and creates new definitions and compliance rules (including prevailing-wage and apprenticeship requirements for construction). It also requires transparency and disclosure of interconnection requests to improve demand forecasting and lets grid operators delay or deny interconnection to protect reliability and affordability for non-data-center customers.