FirstEnergy presses FERC to lift data center wire costs off households

✓What's documented Built on FirstEnergy's June 5 FERC filing (accession 20260605-5169) and a named consultant's formal protest in the same docket.

FirstEnergy asked FERC on June 5 to require data centers to pay for the transmission upgrades needed to connect them, instead of spreading those costs across every customer in the zone as current rules do. The proposal copies a 25-year-old cost-allocation method from gas pipelines and lands days before FERC's expected June 18 vote on large-load interconnection rules. Utilities earn a regulated return on the lines they build, so who pays for that buildout is the whole fight: FirstEnergy wants the cost on the data centers driving it, while a consultant warned the framework still guarantees the utility's profit and shifts demand risk onto customers.

• FirstEnergy filed the proposal at FERC on June 5, 2026, ahead of the commission's expected June 18 large-load interconnection decision.
• Under current rules transmission costs to serve data centers spread across the whole zone; FirstEnergy would put the expansion cost on the data center triggering it through 15-year contracts with collateral.
• The model copies an incremental pricing approach used for natural gas pipelines for more than 25 years.
• Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle and xAI signed the White House Ratepayer Protection Pledge in March 2026, promising to pay for their own power infrastructure.
• Consultant Maven Solutions told FERC the plan guarantees the transmission owner's cost recovery and shifts forecast and cancellation risk to the customer.