AD24-5-000 record addresses cost allocation for load co-located with generation

The Commission opened AD24-5-000 to examine large loads co-located at generating facilities, following a contested amended interconnection service agreement in ER24-2172-000 concerning load sited at an existing nuclear station in PJM.

The dispute is narrow in law and wide in consequence. A load that sits at a generator still depends on the transmission system for reliability, for outages at the host unit, and for reserves. Whether it is a transmission customer, a retail customer, or something the tariff does not currently contemplate determines what it pays and who else pays for what it does not.

For a data centre executive, co-location is attractive precisely because it appears to bypass the interconnection queue. That premise holds only if the rate treatment holds. If the Commission or PJM lands on a construct that assigns network service charges to co-located load, the arbitrage narrows and the queue reasserts itself as the binding path.

For an incumbent generator, the same question determines whether existing units carry a premium as sites rather than as megawatt-hours.

What to watch: any tariff filing that proposes a defined co-location service, and whether it treats partial network service as a distinct product.