When FERC issued its Section 206 show-cause orders on June 18, it gave PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO New England, and NYISO sixty days to justify their large-load interconnection rules or file reforms. The informational reports on generation adequacy arrived in July. But as the tariff deadline approached, all six operators filed for an additional three months, arguing that the scope of reform FERC demands cannot be responsibly designed in a single summer.
The extension requests are not uniform stalling. CAISO is fast-tracking a compliance filing targeted for November. ISO New England has gone furthest, proposing new obligations for large loads that include a "bring your own generation" requirement and explicit measures to prevent cost-shifting to existing ratepayers, a framework that echoes New Jersey's Fair Share Act at the wholesale market level.
What the Filings Reveal
Read together, the six responses preview the national settlement taking shape. Grid operators broadly accept that dedicated large-load interconnection tracks are coming; the disputes center on cost allocation, colocation rules, and whether flexible-load commitments can substitute for firm capacity. The "bring your own generation" concept, requiring hyperscale loads to arrive with matching supply, would formalize what SpaceX's off-grid Terafab and Meta's Entergy gas plants already do voluntarily.
For developers, the three-month delay extends the planning fog: projects in interconnection queues cannot price their grid costs until the new tariffs land. Parselion's assessment is that FERC will grant partial extensions but hold the line on core reforms, with final tariff structures emerging in late 2026 and effective dates in 2027.
The Stakes
The urgency behind FERC's timeline has not eased. PJM's capacity costs remain at record levels, data centers account for roughly $6.3B of the latest $16.4B auction, and every month of delay adds projects to queues designed for a slower era. Whatever emerges from this docket will define large-load interconnection economics for the remainder of the AI buildout. Subscribers with projects in any of the six regions should treat the November-to-January filing window as a material event.