PJM's Proposed Large Load Registry Would Collect Contracts and Ramp Schedules. The Public Would Get Zone Totals, “Where Possible.”

PJM’s proposed Large Load Registry would collect, for every load with a cumulative peak of 50 MW or more at a single electrical site in its region, where the load connects, its peak demand and ramp schedule, its backup generation, and the contracts between the load and the utility that serves it. What PJM commits to publish from all of that is one sentence in its August 13 filing at FERC (Docket ER26-3515): “PJM will post aggregated data from the Large Load Registry, which will be aggregated by Electric Distributor zone/area, where possible and in a manner consistent with existing confidentiality protections” (transmittal p. 42; proposed RAA Schedule 11 §B.1(e) says the same).

The filing does not say when the aggregates will be posted, how often, in what format, or what makes aggregation by zone “possible.” Registry data is confidential to the extent the party supplying it designates it so. PJM says it intends to develop provisions in its Manuals to implement the registry “as needed, including details about who may access the information” (p. 42).

The reason for the registry is in the same filing. PJM’s forecast has peak load growing by 32 GW from 2024 to 2030, 30 GW of it projected to come from data centers, and its capacity auctions for 2027/2028 and 2028/2029 cleared 6,623 MW and 6,831.3 MW (UCAP) short of the reliability requirement (p. 13). The registry would support a proposed Interim Resource Adequacy Service, used only when resources are insufficient in real time. That service would let PJM prioritize load reduction in zones or areas where new large loads have neither brought their own new capacity nor had their capacity needs covered through PJM’s Reliability Backstop Procurement (pp. 1–2).

The field list in Schedule 11 §B.1(a) runs to more than a dozen items. Among them: the customer and a description of the load; its control zone and distribution zone or area; the delivery point or point of interconnection; the in-service date of each increment; peak load and ramp schedule; telemetry; the megawatts of capacity the load brings itself; the capacity allocated to it through the backstop procurement; backup generation, including fuel and permitting limits; and contracts or service agreements between the load and its load-serving entity. PJM can require further details through its Manuals.

As filed, none of those fields records a load’s stage, such as whether it is still being studied, has signed agreements, or is under construction. Some fields point toward maturity: an in-service date, an existing contract, capacity the load has brought or been allocated. None of them is a status, and the public would see them, if at all, only in aggregate. The Manuals could add a status field. The filing does not propose one.

PJM asked FERC to make the registry rules effective October 12, 2026. Under the proposal, loads in service before June 1, 2027 would report by March 1, 2027, new loads would report before energization, and the interim service would be available from the 2027/2028 delivery year, which starts June 1, 2027 (p. 121; Schedule 11 §B.2(a)). FERC has not ruled. On September 2 it denied a request from the Organization of PJM States for more time to comment.

Through September 23, we had received 73 documents in the docket through FERC eSubscription. Filers include Anthropic, Google and Microsoft; the Pennsylvania PUC, New Jersey BPU, West Virginia PSC and Virginia SCC; and consumer advocates from Ohio, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey and Illinois. We have not read their filings for this note and do not characterize their positions. The full filer list, by type and linked to FERC eLibrary, is at /dockets.

PJM’s generation queue already does what the registry, as filed, would not: it gives each request a status. As of September 24, 149.1 GW of active generation requests of 50 MW or more sat in the queue, and 17.6 GW of it, about 12%, was listed as Under Construction or Partially in Service - Under Construction (PJM queue data, via gridstatus; the per-queue figures and the rule we read them by are at /verify). As a count of capacity with signed interconnection agreements, 17.6 GW is a floor: RMI’s 2023 analysis of the PJM queue found signed projects under other statuses too, including Engineering and Procurement and Suspended.

Update, September 24: after this report went out, we began counting PJM’s Engineering and Procurement status as signed, since PJM itself groups it with Under Construction as projects with executed final agreements. PJM’s signed floor on /verify now reads 57.8 GW of 149.0 GW, about 39%. The Under Construction figure above is unchanged. The correction is logged at /corrections.

On the load side, the registry as filed would give PJM a site-by-site record to use in curtailment and give the public zone-level aggregates with no stage attached. The Manuals are where that could change. When PJM posts its first aggregates, we will read them against this filing and publish what they show, with the date.

This report reads the transmittal letter and the proposed Reliability Assurance Agreement revisions in ER26-3515 as filed on August 13, 2026; cite it with that date. FERC had not ruled on the filing as of September 24, 2026. We are descriptive today: our predictive track record does not resolve until about December 2026. Don’t trust — verify.