The regulator stops the direct feed
On 1 November 2024 the United States Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected an amendment to an interconnection agreement that would have raised the load of an AWS data centre, wired directly to the Susquehanna nuclear plant, from 300 to 480 MW. On the same day the commission held a technical conference on large co-located loads in general.
Why it matters
The arrangement of wiring into a generator and not paying the grid got its first answer from a regulator. The refusal did not stop the campus - the existing 300 MW stood - but it made clear that scaling computation by pulling generation out of the wholesale market needs a permission that was not given here.
The amendment was filed by PJM in June 2024; Exelon and AEP protested. In August the commission sent a request for further information and set a technical conference for November. The refusal left the existing 300 MW agreement untouched, so the first phases of the campus went on being built. In December 2024 the commission deferred the rehearing request, and the power seller appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. What the record does not claim. There is no vote count here: ferc.gov is unreachable both to a plain request and through a browser, and the archive holds no copy, so the split among commissioners is unconfirmed. Nor are the commission's reasons given - a party's statement relays the outcome, not the reasoning.