At 11:59 PM Eastern on July 3, the Department of Energy's Section 202(c) emergency order — the one that gave PJM Interconnection authority to curtail data center loads during last week's heat emergency — expired without a replacement.

The paper's July 6 account of how the DOE routed data centers off the grid during the heat emergency described the 202(c) order as an active instrument, and the parallel FERC action that barred homeowners from paying data center grid upgrade costs as the companion instrument. Today, one of those instruments no longer exists. What remains is a single regulatory clock: FERC's June 18 show-cause orders to six regional grid operators, requiring them to justify their interconnection pricing rules or reform them, with responses due by August 17 [1].

The two instruments were always structurally different. The DOE's 202(c) authority under the Federal Power Act is emergency-specific — it can only be invoked when the Secretary of Energy determines that an emergency threatens the reliability of an electric system, and it lapses when that emergency ends [1]. The FERC show-cause orders are a docket proceeding, triggered by the same DOE directive but administered through FERC's own rulemaking authority and not time-limited by the emergency's resolution [2].

The practical consequence of the expiry is that data centers currently carry no binding obligation arising from the July emergency. During the emergency, PJM used the 202(c) authority to route large loads — including data centers — onto diesel backup generation, preserving grid capacity for residential users during peak demand [1]. That routing was temporary. The data centers absorbed the cost of diesel backup for the period of the emergency. No permanent mechanism exists, as of today, to require data centers to carry their own backup generation costs going forward, to prepay for grid capacity during peak periods, or to contribute to the diesel reserve fund PJM deployed.

Whether the emergency leaves a permanent regulatory mark now depends entirely on what the six grid operators — PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, NYISO, and ISO-NE — file with FERC by August 17 [2]. FERC's show-cause orders raised two specific concerns about the current tariff structures: a lack of transparency in how network upgrade costs are assigned to large loads, and an absence of cost-recovery agreements between grid operators and large load customers [3]. If those dockets produce a binding tariff change — a new cost-allocation structure, a required prepayment mechanism, a capacity reservation requirement — the emergency will have produced a permanent mark. If the six operators successfully defend their existing tariff structures as just and reasonable, the emergency will have produced diesel bills for one week and nothing else.

The FERC proceeding is not a small docket. The June 18 orders were described by FERC itself as the most significant action on large-load interconnection in the commission's history [2]. They were triggered by a DOE directive from Secretary Wright, who invoked a rarely used authority under the DOE Organization Act to direct FERC to consider new rules. That directive produced FERC action; the question is whether FERC action produces binding tariff reform.

The show-cause structure is adversarial. The six grid operators are required to justify their existing tariff structures or propose alternatives. If they defend the status quo, FERC must find that the existing structures are unjust and unreasonable before it can impose changes — a legal standard that requires FERC to make a factual record [3]. That record-building takes time that the August 17 response deadline only begins.

The costs at stake are not trivial. PJM's own accounting — which the paper has cited across several prior editions — shows that data center load growth drove more than $13 billion in additional costs across recent capacity auctions. Those costs were borne by existing ratepayers under current tariff structures. Whether the FERC show-cause dockets produce a mechanism to shift some of those costs back to data centers, or whether data centers continue to receive the grid capacity their loads require without bearing the full forward cost, is the operative question that the August 17 deadline begins to answer.

The 202(c) order was the emergency instrument. It did what emergency instruments do: it responded to an acute event and then lapsed. The FERC show-cause orders are the regulatory instrument. What they produce in the next six weeks will determine whether the paper's operating hypothesis — that every AI-campus claim is tested against whether it carries its own power, water, and backup receipts — acquires a binding precedent, or remains a journalistic standard without a regulatory counterpart.

-- DARA OSEI, London