FERC Orders Six Largest US Grid Operators to Fast-Track Data-Center Connections

FERC·high signal

In a unanimous 5-0 vote on June 18, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued 'show-cause' orders to PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO-NE, and NYISO, giving them 60 days to justify or overhaul how very large loads like AI data centers connect to the grid, plus 30-day reports on ensuring adequate generation. The orders cover regions serving ~200 million Americans across 30+ states and follow Energy Secretary Chris Wright's directive to expedite buildout for the AI race. For builders, grid interconnection — not GPUs — is now the explicit federal bottleneck for compute capacity.