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PJM testified at FERC's Oct. 21 reliability conference that about 3,900 MW of large loads switched to backup on July 22, and urged enforceable ride-through rules. It is testimony, not a ruling.
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FERC headquarters in Washington. The commission held its annual Reliability Technical Conference on Oct. 21, where PJM gave its testimony.
Image: PJM Inside Lines
Source · Image from the PJM Inside Lines article page, used for news reporting.
PJM Interconnection told the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Oct. 21 that about 3,900 MW of large loads unexpectedly switched to backup generation on July 22 after routine transmission events, and asked for enforceable ride-through rules. This was testimony at a conference, not a FERC decision.
PJM says about 3,900 MW of large loads moved to backup on July 22; the account is PJM's testimony, not a FERC finding.
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According to PJM Inside Lines, the grid operator's own news site, Christopher Pilong, PJM's senior director of operations planning, spoke on the first panel of FERC's annual Reliability Technical Conference. PJM said it and the transmission owners managed the July 22 event, but it caused voltage fluctuations that PJM described as concerning. Ride-through means a facility stays connected through a voltage or frequency disturbance instead of dropping off the grid.
In a prefiled statement at FERC, Pilong set out four reliability priorities. PJM supports a framework that requires timely, accurate and continuously updated technical information from large load operators. It wants enforceable voltage and frequency ride-through requirements for both new and existing large loads. It wants interconnection and energization decisions to reflect the time needed to build enough generation and transmission. And it wants coordinated electric-gas planning, cybersecurity protections and accountability for facility performance. These are PJM's positions. None is a rule, and PJM Inside Lines reports no FERC action on them.
The ride-through point matters most for data-center developers. A requirement covering existing loads, not only new ones, would reach facilities that are already connected. PJM said it is drafting ride-through requirements informed by the July 22 event and is taking part in North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) work on standards for large computational loads.
Pilong said data centers use power at a nearly constant rate, which makes the spring and fall shoulder seasons harder to run. Generation and transmission owners normally take equipment out for maintenance in those months. "It really is like a rising sea level," he told commissioners. "It is every hour of the day."
PJM said that mismatch showed up Oct. 12-14, when weather up to 20 degrees above normal hit PJM and grid operators to the west and south while large amounts of generation and transmission were offline, triggering emergency procedures. "Two to three years ago, we would not have seen that," Pilong said. His answer was supply: "It really is about getting things built."
The conference also discussed compute flexibility, in which data centers cut power use for certain computing jobs to reduce power use and potential impacts on residential customers. PJM said it is working with Emerald AI and other customers, and that the practice is being or will be studied at multiple sites in its territory, including an NVIDIA AI factory in Manassas, Virginia. PJM is also preparing its response to FERC's call for interim, non-firm transmission service frameworks. PJM said it will need the same level of response and flexibility from data centers that it gets from generation and transmission owners while new supply catches up.
Voltgrid has covered the regulatory pieces around this. FERC approved PJM's 50 MW load registry but rejected its data center curtailment plan, and a NERC committee approved a data center ride-through project, as Voltgrid reported. That story, citing RTO Insider, put the July 22 load loss at about 3,800 MW across Northern Virginia; PJM's own account gives about 3,900 MW. The two figures come from different sources and have not been reconciled.
This account comes from PJM's own site, and Voltgrid did not read the prefiled PDF itself. The docket number was not confirmed, and no independent coverage of the conference was found. FERC has not acted on PJM's ride-through proposal. Watch for the NERC standard drafting and for PJM's filing on non-firm transmission service, which will show how much of this becomes binding on data-center connections.
