After celebrating the United States 250th birthday, leaders of each of the country’s six regional grid operators are now spending the week determining how they plan to power the country’s largest energy customers, a challenge that impacts everyone from the biggest tech companies in the world to a family paying their monthly utility bill. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a “show-cause order” to each region last month, a significant move as the regulator seeks to balance consumer safeguards with large loads’ appetite for massive amounts of power. The first report, due in days, requires PJM Interconnection, Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), Southwest Power Pool (SPP), California Independent System Operator Corporation (CAISO), ISO New England (ISO-NE), and New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) to detail how they will ensure that adequate generation will be available to serve existing and new large loads. (ERCOT, which manages most of Texas, is not under FERC jurisdiction).
Fortunately, we already have a proven blueprint.
GridLab is thrilled to release “The Texas Flex: How Connect and Manage can deliver speed to power for generation and load,” authored by leading Texas energy expert Joshua Rhodes, PhD at IdeaSmiths and research scientist at University of Texas Austin. The report details how the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) has successfully used system flexibility to connect new generation at a pace that rivals some of the world’s largest countries, and how it is now adapting that same framework to manage an unprecedented wave of new load. Texas does this while investing in major backbone upgrades, supporting the state economy and enabling growth. This strategy has positioned the state of Texas to bring on more new demand than any other state.
The Texas Takeaways for the Rest of the Country:
Grid operators across the rest of the country do not need to replicate ERCOT’s entire market design to learn from it.
At least two ISO/RTOs have already created their own generator and load collocation rules to allow for faster connection of generators needed to serve large load customers. FERC approved PJM’s Colocation Proposal late last year, and SPP’s “High Impact Large Load Generation Assessment” (HILLGA) early in 2026. Other ISO/RTOs have also been working on their own recipe. For example, MISO’s “Zero-Injection GIA” ZGIA concept proposes to speed up generation interconnection for generators directly serving large loads and not injecting into the transmission system. The industry seems to agree on a general theme: allow suppliers to pair with large load customers to expedite the interconnection of both. Of course, this shift presents new questions ((e.g. do they need to balance hour-by-hour? What happens if the supply or demand never shows up?) and challenges including the establishment of new operational and coordination paradigms. In any case, it is clear that the tide has officially turned from the old way of managing generation and large load interconnections separately.
Building the Bigger Pie
FERC’s actions are being framed as a means to more quickly connect load to the transmission system, the supply-chain super-highway that brings energy from power plants to the homes and businesses where it is used. And indeed, FERC identified more efficient transmission service application and study processes, including consideration of alternative transmission technologies (ATTs) as the first requirement. This is a great first step since the country’s grid needs more transmission capacity as fast as possible, but it also needs more supply to connect to that transmission.
We cannot rapidly connect load to the system without also dramatically increasing the speed at which we connect generation. Transmission lines exist to connect supply to demand. Without new sources of supply, the transmission lines can only spread the existing pie more efficiently. We need a bigger pie.
By issuing these show-cause orders, FERC has taken an important step towards a bigger, better grid. Now, the leaders at the country’s power grids will determine whether they will move towards a flexible and responsible grid built for this century or remain stranded in the morass of overcomplication and old-way thinking. By learning from Texas’ connect-and-manage strategy and separating physical connection from guaranteed deliverability, utilizing provisional service categories, and demanding operational flexibility from large loads, the rest of the country can break the interconnection logjam.