Lindsay See

So PJM devised this special backstop procurement to go out and buy that additional capacity.

But the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stepped in, and they essentially said, "Yeah, y- you need the extra power, but before you go buying it, you need a much better answer to the basic question of who's going to pay for it." And Lindsey See, who's a member of the commission, said, "The customers creating these new costs should bear responsibility for them.

Existing customers shouldn't be left with the bill." She specifically noted that rapid growth in electricity demand is a major reason for this backs- that this backstop is necessary in the first place.

And that's where Ohio's failure to act becomes really important because states still have enormous influence over how utilities divide these costs among different kinds of customers, and Ohio has not adopted statewide protections clearly ensuring that the extraordinary costs created by data centers get charged to the data centers rather than spread across everybody's electric bills.