Utility load forecasts and aggregated national projections are compiled on different bases

Utility load forecasts are assembled from interconnection requests and customer inquiries. A single data centre developer will approach several utilities across several states for one facility. Each utility records a request. Aggregating those records nationally counts the facility multiple times.

No public dataset resolves this, because the deduplicating information, which developer holds which request, is commercially confidential. The result is that the most widely cited load growth figures have an unquantified upper bias.

The corrective signals are downstream and slower: executed service agreements, energisation dates, and metered consumption in Form EIA-923 reporting. Those arrive years after the forecast that moved capital.

For a planner, the practical approach is to weight requests by contractual commitment rather than by megawatts requested, which is what large load tariffs with minimum take provisions are designed to force.

For an investor, the discipline is to treat announced load as a call option held by the developer, not as demand.

What to watch: whether any commission requires disclosure of duplicate requests as a condition of forecast acceptance.