Maryland's ratepayer advocate says the data-center grid fight now has a number: $1.6 billion over the next decade. Utility Dive reported that the Maryland Office of People's Counsel told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that PJM's transmission rules force Maryland customers to pay for projects mainly serving out-of-state data centers. [1]

That number extends two positions the paper took Wednesday. PJM capacity prices already showed reserve stress reaching bills, and FERC's data-center load-forecasting fight would decide real costs. Maryland's complaint supplies the invoice logic: not just whether demand grows, but who is assigned the wires built for it.

The complaint asks FERC to find PJM's baseline transmission cost-allocation rules unjust and unreasonable because they impose costs on Maryland electric customers that are not commensurate with benefits those customers receive. [2] Utility Dive reported that 80 Maryland state lawmakers backed the filing, warning that data-center growth of more than 80,000 megawatts over 20 years could bill Maryland customers billions more. [1]

The mechanism is not glamorous. PJM spreads part of certain regional transmission costs by load-ratio share across its footprint and another part through a distribution-factor analysis. [1] The Maryland advocate says those formulas do not capture the reliability problems caused by concentrated data-center load and instead socialize costs to customers who did not cause them. [1]

X wants a villain: AI, utilities, regulators, or Virginia's Data Center Alley. Mainstream coverage correctly calls it a FERC complaint. The gap is that cost allocation is the actual politics. A data center does not need to appear on a Maryland bill by name to shape that bill; it only needs a tariff that spreads the transmission cost upstream.

The remedy is equally specific. Maryland asks FERC to make PJM revise its methodology so data centers pay for transmission projects they cause, including direct assignment to the zones where the data centers are located. [1][2] That would not settle every question about energy use, but it would move the dispute from grievance to accounting.

If AI infrastructure is to be sold as self-funded, transmission is where the claim either holds or breaks. Maryland has put a price tag on the break.

-- THEO KAPLAN, San Francisco