Maryland citizens slapped with $2 billion grid upgrade bill for out-of-state AI data centers — state complains to federal energy regulators, says additional cost breaks ‘ratepayer protection pledge’ promises

Source: Tom’s Hardware

Image credit: Shutterstock

Complaint to FERC

The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel (OPC), a state agency that represents utility consumers, filed a complaint before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) over PJM Interconnection, LLC’s plan to allocate $2 billion of the $22 billion it spent upgrading the grid to accommodate growing demand from data centers.

According to the OPC press release, the $2 billion allocation would add $1.6 billion to Maryland consumers’ bills over the next ten years:

• Residential: $823 million total (≈ $345 per customer)
• Commercial: $146 million total (≈ $673 per customer)
• Industrial: $629 million total (≈ $15,074 per customer)

“Without FERC action, Maryland customers face paying billions for transmission infrastructure that PJM is advancing to benefit data centers,” said Maryland People’s Counsel David S. Lapp. “PJM’s cost allocation rules are broken. Maryland customers have neither caused the need for these billions in new transmission projects nor will they meaningfully benefit from them.”

PJM Interconnection Overview

PJM Interconnection, LLC is the United States’ largest electricity transmission organization, covering 13 states plus Washington, D.C.:

• Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia
• Serves roughly 65 million people, about 20 % of the U.S. population.

Several of these states, including Maryland, host a high concentration of data centers. The anticipated demand from power‑hungry AI systems is prompting PJM to upgrade its infrastructure.

Ratepayer Protection Pledge

Maryland argues that the costs of these upgrades should be charged directly to the jurisdictions where the infrastructure is built, or—per the “ratepayer protection pledge” that tech companies were asked to sign—billed directly to the data center operators themselves.

The OPC notes “extreme uncertainty” regarding load growth driven by data center demand and points out that utility providers can profit from the upgrades even if the projected demand never materializes. When data centers do not honor the pledge, the investment costs fall on existing utility customers rather than the facilities that generate the load.

Reference: President Donald Trump’s request for tech companies to commit to the pledge is detailed in a Tom’s Hardware article.