Jason Connell, PJM Interconnection vice president – planning, outlined for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) earlier this month the steps that the regional transmission organization, whose territory includes New Jersey, and its stakeholders are taking to meet the challenges of accurately forecasting the growing electricity demand from data centers and other large load customers.
Connell and other industry representatives were in Washington for FERC’s Annual Reliability Technical Conference.
The meeting comes as New Jersey residents continue to grapple with rising electricity rates, triggered by an increase of as much as 20% beginning in June. Climbing electricity costs have become a hot-button issue in this year’s gubernatorial race between Democrat Mikie Sherrill and Republican Jack Ciattarelli.
In a letter to FERC Chairman David Rosner, which was submitted as part of the technical conference record, PJM President and CEO Manu Asthana described how the regional transmission organization is working with load-serving entities and electric distribution companies (such as local utilities) and other stakeholders to promote consistent practices across its region to accurately assess the demand growth expected from proposed data center developments.
PJM, which coordinates the movement of wholesale electricity in all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, depends on the entities that serve large load customers at the retail level, because that is where the request for electricity service comes in.
Those local utilities have differing practices and procedures in assessing new customer requests; this complicates the process for assessing the amount and timing of new electricity demand consistently across the PJM footprint. To address this, PJM’s Load Analysis Subcommittee developed a load adjustment request implementation document that provides guidelines in the approach to large loads by load serving entities.
In September, the PJM Board of Managers launched an accelerated Critical Issue Fast Path (CIFP) stakeholder process to address challenges to resource adequacy caused by the advent of large loads. Load forecast improvements are a key priority in this process, expected to be complete by year’s end.
PJM is engaged with stakeholders in the CIFP process, which is expected to result in a proposal filed with FERC in December. PJM’s most recent proposal recommends:
- Addition of step for state regulatory authorities to review large load requests
- Further formalization of criteria to assess large load customers’ commitment to coming in service
- A requirement that load serving entities inquire of subject customers whether service requests are duplicated elsewhere in or outside of PJM, to appropriately assess speculative or redundant proposals
- Consideration of financial security requirements from large load customers (or other responsible entities) for the capacity required to be purchased to serve their needs, whether such requirements arise from state law or retail tariffs
