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Dive Brief:
FirstEnergy on Friday urged the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to require data centers to pay for transmission upgrades needed to bring them online instead of spreading those costs across existing customers as is current practice.
The proposal is based on a cost allocation method that has been used for natural gas pipelines for more than 25 years, according to FirstEnergy. It could be adopted without requiring legislation or “novel regulatory authority,” the Akron, Ohio-based utility company said.
The proposal faced pushback at FERC on Monday from Maven Solutions, a consulting firm specializing in AI infrastructure governance and other issues. “FirstEnergy’s framework guarantees the transmission owner’s cost recovery, collateralizes the transmission owner’s investment, and shifts all demand-forecast, utilization, and cancellation risk from the utility to the customer,” Jayne Algermissen, Maven Solutions founder and technical program manager, said in the filing.
