The four largest hyperscalers plan to spend $725 billion on AI infrastructure this year — setting a new record over 2025 and exceeding forecasts.1 Microsoft alone is reporting $190 billion in spending this year, with $80 billion in Azure buildout to address commercial customer backlog tied to power constraints.
AI infrastructure and the demand for more cloud computing power remain high and are growing exponentially. The bottleneck to delivering on expectations might come down to energy sovereignty — that is, the ability for data centers to generate and pay for their own electricity — and the ability of states to respond to new projects connecting to the grid. As more plan to come online, they are also managing growing local opposition.
There are two competing philosophies on who pays for grid expansions. One has households absorb the costs as a public good, and the other puts it on the customer that creates it. The question of who pays is being decided right now — not in Washington, not in state legislatures, but in 50 state Public Utility Commissions (PUCs). In Pennsylvania, the PUC has taken a position requiring data center developers to carry the cost of large-load tariffs. In Georgia, the elected commission has pushed back on federal scrutiny instead. These choices put PUCs at the forefront of who absorbs forecast risk if demand falls short.2
On April 20, Senator Jon Ossoff sent a four-question letter to FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) asking who carries the consequence when a load forecast goes wrong and how they plan to uphold their mission: “to assist consumers in obtaining reliable, safe, secure, and economically efficient energy services at a reasonable cost.” Ossoff requested a response by June 1. PUCs are holding the pen on rates, and just in the past six weeks they have been moving quickly to write new rules in response to data center demand.
The Federal Power Act of 1935 split jurisdiction in two: at the federal level, FERC manages wholesale and interstate transmission, and at the state level, retail rates and local distribution are governed by state PUCs. Of the country’s 50 PUCs, 40 are appointed and 10 are elected on partisan ballots — Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota. Not a small detail. When Georgia PSC officials publicly contested Ossoff’s inquiry on April 27, it was an elected partisan body defending its own rate decisions while speculation heightens about its ability to guarantee the rate structure. Pennsylvania moved differently a few days later — an appointed, nonpartisan body responding to a different kind of pressure.
On April 30, 2026, the Pennsylvania PUC voted 5–0 to adopt a Large Load Tariff Framework at Docket M-2025-3054271, on a motion by Chairman Steve DeFrank. It applies to customers above 50 MW individually or 100 MW in aggregate, and does three things. First, it implements a but-for cost causation standard: if a network upgrade would not have been built but for a large load’s interconnection, that customer carries the cost through non-refundable payments or Contributions in Aid of Construction. It protects the existing rate base. Second, it requires deposits and collateral sufficient to cover those upgrade costs, mitigating stranded-cost risk if a project doesn’t proceed. Third, it allows large load customers to self-construct the infrastructure they require, including grid-affecting upgrades, provided they meet utility, FERC, and NERC standards.3
A unanimous, nonpartisan vote of this scope from a regulatory body happens when public sentiment, moratorium bills, and the credible threat of projects walking away from the Commonwealth converge in one docket. Letting households absorb the cost of a load class they did not request has become politically unworkable. Even so, the model tariff framework is voluntary. Electric Distribution Companies (EDCs) may incorporate it into their filings. Even with the framework, disparities still favor operators over households, and interventions typically fall to advocacy groups rather than well-resourced industry counsel. The case of Philadelphia’s primary energy utility PECO’s CEO firing is a reminder that the political cost of getting it wrong now lands quickly. Policymakers and utilities are weighing in alongside ratepayers, who are watching closely for what happens if rates spike.
The DELTa database — jointly run by NC Clean Energy Technology Center and SEPA4 — counts 77 large-load tariffs across 36 states, involving 60 utilities. There is no national policy, only a state-by-state regulatory formation accelerating in the absence of one.
In Maine, Governor Janet Mills vetoed LD 307 — the first-in-the-nation data center moratorium. The legislature failed to override the veto on April 29. Governor Mills then signed LD 713, ending state business tax incentives for data centers, and issued Executive Order 5 establishing a 15-person Data Center Advisory Council co-chaired by the commissioners of Energy Resources and Environmental Protection, with seats for Central Maine Power and Versant Power, an EDC. The order directs Energy Resources, with the Maine PUC, to identify ratepayer protections “to the extent permissible under law.” The Council reports are due by January 29, 2027.
Is this only happening in Maine? No — other states have stood up advisory councils. What makes Maine stand out is that the order tells its PUC to write ratepayer protections aimed at data center load. Did the veto override the will of the people? The legislature didn’t have two-thirds to override the veto. That tells us more about the political will and less about whether ratepayers are well represented. The moratorium’s substance didn’t disappear. It moved to an advisory council — a setting friendlier to industry — and seats on councils like this one often go to whoever can spend the most to claim them.
On April 30 — the same day as the Pennsylvania vote — Mills suspended her U.S. Senate campaign, citing the lack of “the one thing that political campaigns unfortunately require today: the financial resources.” Outspent $4.8 million to $1.5 million, she had pulled her television ads weeks earlier. The withdrawal is its own data point about who can sustain a public-interest argument long enough to be heard.
A large-load tariff is a contract about who is on the hook when a forecast goes awry. Pennsylvania has made a bold move to ensure customers carry the costs. That is real. But transparency at grid connection is just the start. A frame from last month’s Millersville University AI Symposium worth borrowing: a social contract for AI infrastructure means every load decision, interconnection study, and cost-allocation methodology is open to public inspection. Human in the loop is a first principle in AI software development. The same should apply to physical AI infrastructure — a move towards real intervenor capacity, not solely a public comment period and docket filings.
Two trackers to know. DELTa catalogs the rules; Good Jobs First’s Subsidy Tracker catalogs the tax breaks — though only 11 of 36 subsidy-granting states disclose which companies receive them. What no one publishes yet is the project-by-project view — which data center operates under which tariff, and what that costs the households on the other side of the meter. Filling that gap would boost transparency.
FERC’s response to Ossoff is due June 1. Pennsylvania has shown what an appointed commission can do; Georgia has shown what an elected one will say; Maine has shown what an executive will route through a PUC when a legislature can’t deliver. The question for the next few weeks is whether the people whose rates are being written are at the table when it happens.
So here’s one thing you can do: find your state’s PUC docket on large-load tariffs. Look up the public-comment window. If your state has no open docket, that is also information. The pen is moving. On the page is the rate you will pay.
Figure synthesized from Q1 2026 hyperscaler earnings disclosures and analyst capex projections compiled in author’s research note. The $725B figure represents the upper bound of consensus estimates across Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon; Yahoo Finance reports a comparable aggregate following the Q1 earnings rush.
For a longer treatment of the boom-bust risk profile in AI infrastructure capex — and what happens to ratepayers and host communities if utilization curves fall short of the forecasts now driving rate-base expansion, see “When the Boom Exits,” Compound Impact (2026).
FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) regulates wholesale electricity markets and interstate transmission. NERC (the North American Electric Reliability Corporation) is the FERC-certified Electric Reliability Organization that develops and enforces mandatory reliability standards for the bulk power system, subject to FERC approval. A large load that self-constructs grid-affecting infrastructure must therefore satisfy both FERC’s market and tariff rules and NERC’s reliability standards, in addition to the host utility’s interconnection requirements.
DELTa is updated quarterly and jointly maintained by the NC Clean Energy Technology Center (NCSU) and the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA).
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