Overview

• Utilities in Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia won approval in 2024 for about $4.4 billion in local transmission projects tied to data centers, with nearly half of the costs in Virginia.
• More than 150 local transmission projects to serve data centers were initiated from 2022 to 2024 across the seven PJM states, the report finds.
• PJM’s independent market monitor reports that data centers are a major driver of higher capacity costs that have contributed to double-digit bill increases in parts of the region.
• The report says local transmission built for single large customers is treated in planning and ratemaking as shared system expense, leaving costs spread across all customers rather than assigned to the causing customer.
• UCS recommends that FERC and state commissions adopt cost-causation rules, create a new customer class for direct transmission connections, and require utilities to track and assign these costs, with similar cost patterns expected this year according to the report.