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The Maryland Office of People’s Counsel (OPC), a state agency that represents its utility consumers, filed a complaint before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) regarding PJM Interconnection, LLC’s plans to charge it $2 billion of the $22 billion it spent to upgrade its grid to accommodate increasing demand from data centers.
According to the OPC’s press release, this $2 billion bill will cost the state’s consumers an extra $1.6 billion in the next ten years alone — that means an extra $823 million for residential (approx. $345 per customer), $146 million for commercial (approx. $673 per customer), and $629 million for industrial customers (approx. $15,074 per customer).
PJM Interconnection, LLC is the United States’ largest electricity transmission company, and covers 13 states plus Washington, D.C. This includes Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia, covering about 65 million people, or about 20% of the entire U.S. population. Some of these states, including Maryland, host a large number of data centers, so the firm needs to upgrade its infrastructure to meet projected demand from these power-hungry AI systems.
If I'm reading that correctly, that's $1.6 billion over ten years or an extra $823 million over ten years.
$85 million per year.
Maryland population: 6 million.
Cost per resident / per year / increase: 14 cents per year; one cent per month.
At least that's what I'm reading.
