On December 18, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission declared the tariff of PJM Interconnection—the operator of the largest electric grid in the United States, spanning all or part of 13 states and the District of Columbia—"unjust and unreasonable" in the way it handles data centers wired directly to power plants [1]. The order did something quieter and larger than the phrase suggests. It moved the question of who pays for the grid out of the statehouses and into a federal filing.

That is the development the slogans have outrun. The paper's June 15 account of how FERC moved AI load from demand rhetoric into a public who-pays docket framed the proceeding as a forecast. A day later it is a same-month bill. The companion report on how state legislatures turned the data-center subsidy era into public pricing rules described the fight as it was understood—a state fight. FERC's order rearranges the map.

Here is the jurisdictional move, stated plainly. When a data center sits behind a power plant's meter—"co-located," in the regulatory term—several parties argued the arrangement belonged to state commissions [1]. FERC disagreed. It found it retains exclusive authority over the interconnection of generators to the interstate transmission system, and over the wholesale and transmission costs that follow, even when a large load hides behind the generator [1]. States still set retail rates. But the cost-allocation question—does the server farm carry its own grid costs, or do they spread to everyone else—is now FERC's to answer. And FERC has not answered it. The order sent the rates and terms to a paper hearing, with briefing that opened in February [1]. The binding decision has not been written, only claimed.

While the answer waits, the meter runs. PJM's capacity auction—the forward market that pays generators to be available—has gone vertical. The clearing price rose from $28.92 per megawatt-day for 2024/25 to $269.92 for 2025/26, then to $329.17 for the year beginning this month, a level reached only because PJM imposed a price cap [2]. Monitoring Analytics, PJM's independent market monitor, attributed 63% of the 2025/26 jump to data centers—about $9.3 billion that customers across the region will repay in higher rates [2]. Beginning in June 2026, ratepayers across PJM collectively pay an additional $1.4 billion in capacity costs, again driven largely by data-center demand [2].

The bills have already landed in places. In Washington, Pepco residential customers saw charges rise about $21 a month starting last June; the district's consumer advocate estimates roughly half of that, $10, traces to the capacity-price spike [2]. The Natural Resources Defense Council projects that PJM consumers could pay up to $163 billion more through 2033 as data-center demand keeps supply tight—about $70 a month for an average family by 2028 [3]. The July capacity auction alone added $7.2 billion, an 82% increase [3].

This is where X and the trade press split. On X, the framing is a single sentence: households are subsidizing server farms, and the auction is the proof. The numbers travel well—the 833% auction jump, the 63% data-center share, the $160 billion figure—because they are, broadly, the same numbers FERC and PJM publish [2][3]. The trade press covers the same event as plumbing: interim transmission service, contract-demand tariffs, paper hearings, compliance filings. Both are right about what they see. Neither resolves the thing that matters, because the thing that matters has not been decided.

The order does flag the mechanism most likely to socialize cost quietly. FERC found PJM's rules for behind-the-meter generation "no longer just and reasonable," because netting a data center's on-site plant against its grid draw shifts costs to other customers and hides the load from reliability planning [1]. Joseph Bowring, the market monitor, backs a blunter fix that the data centers resist: make large loads bring their own generation [3].

For the household reading a June bill, the useful translation is this. The increase is real and already arriving. The rule that decides whether it keeps arriving—and whether the AI build-out pays its own way or charges the difference to the kitchen light—is a live federal filing with no verdict. Until FERC writes the cost-allocation answer it pulled away from the states, the ratepayer is paying the deposit on a question the regulator has not closed.

-- DARA OSEI, London