PJM 2028/2029 base residual auction opened Jun 30 / PJM board urges 13 states immediately establish residential shielding rules / RTO signals cost socialization runway ended / ERCOT Batch Zero two step deadline / ILLE Form W notarized to TSP DSP Jul 10 / TSP DSP Form W plus LPC limit to ERCOT Jul 24 / miss deadline drops to standard queue 438 GW / Abbott PUCT ERCOT joint memo Jul 17 / all resolve Jul 10-24 window / Sep auction results / OR Schedule 96 template

Plain-English background. In deregulated wholesale electricity markets, capacity is auctioned three years ahead of when it delivers. PJM (the grid operator for 13 states from Illinois to Virginia covering ~65 million people, the largest electricity market in the world by served population) ran its 2027/2028 auction in July 2025 with clearing prices around 22x the prior year's, sending average residential bills up $10-30/month across the footprint. That $10-30/month pass-through is the political fault line that's now driving state-level data-center policy across the entire PJM region — Virginia's tax, Maryland's moratoriums, New Jersey's rate hearings, Ohio's DCIP freeze, all trace back to auction cost socialization from the 2027/2028 cycle. The 2028/2029 auction (the one for capacity delivered in June 2028 through May 2029) opened Monday June 30, 2026 — yesterday. This is the auction that will price whether the data-center-driven demand surge continues to socialize to residential customers or gets meaningfully shielded. PJM's board went public simultaneously with the auction open, urging all 13 states in the PJM footprint to 'immediately' set up rules that shield residential and existing customers from any auction cost passthrough attributable to data centers. That's an unusual move — RTOs typically stay quiet on state politics because the state PUCs are their regulators. The PJM board publicly telling states 'do this now' is a signal that even the RTO itself thinks the socialization problem is politically unsustainable and needs state-level firewalls before the auction results come out (typical timing: results in September, cost impacts show up on customer bills in June 2028). Mechanically, the states have several tools available: (a) dedicated data-center rate class (Oregon's Schedule 96 template, effective June 10, 2026 with ~29% rate increase for data centers), (b) capacity-payment carve-out (state PUC orders utilities to allocate a fixed percentage of auction cost specifically to data center customers), (c) 'social tariff' models where residential customers get a guaranteed capped rate and everything above is allocated pro-rata to industrial customers. Only Oregon has implemented (a); the others are in various rulemaking stages. PJM's 'immediately' language suggests the board wants at least Virginia, Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey, and Illinois to have some version live before the September auction results. On the parallel Texas track. ERCOT Batch Zero PCLR (Provisional Controllable Load Resource) is the process by which data centers ≥75 MW in ERCOT must classify their load as interruptible (agreeing to be curtailed during system stress in exchange for lower demand charges) or non-interruptible. The classification is a two-step deadline. **Step 1 (July 10, 2026):** the Interconnected Large Load Entity (ILLE — that's the data center operator) must submit a completed, notarized Form W to its serving Interconnecting Transmission Service Provider (TSP) or Distribution Service Provider (DSP). Missing July 10 = dropped from Batch Zero, which means the data center loses the ability to interconnect on the accelerated Batch Zero timeline and falls into the standard queue (which per ERCOT's own trending topic PDF is now ~438,000 MW proposed demand and probably 3-5 years slower). **Step 2 (July 24, 2026):** the TSP/DSP must submit Form W plus supporting modeling data (including per-study-year minimum load projection commitment / LPC limit) to ERCOT. And between those two Texas dates. **July 17, 2026 — Abbott joint memo deadline.** Gov. Abbott issued a June 10, 2026 directive requiring PUCT and ERCOT to submit a joint memo by July 17 that (1) summarizes actions taken under existing authority to shield Texas ratepayers from data center infrastructure cost passthrough, (2) identifies statutory limits on those actions, (3) recommends legislation for the 2027 session. That memo will be the definitive Texas policy document going into next year's legislative session and will be closely read for how far PUCT is willing to go in creating dedicated data center rate structures without new legislation. The PJM 2028/2029 auction, the ERCOT Batch Zero deadlines, and the Abbott memo all resolve in the July 10-July 24 window. That's the entire domestic wholesale-electricity market's data center policy stance being priced simultaneously in about two weeks.

Primary source · Utility Dive — PJM Accelerates Backstop Reliability Auction Amid Uncertainty Over Data Cen[ters] + ERCOT Market Notice M-B062326-01 (Jun 23 2026) + ERCOT Trending Topic New Batch Connection Process for Large Electricity Users (Jun 18 2026 PDF) + PUCT Press Release Jun 18 2026 — PUCT Approves ERCOT's Batch Zero Rules + EPE Consulting — New Pathway and Deadlines in ERCOT's Large Load Batch Zero Provisional Controllable Load Resource (PCLR) + Willkie Farr & Gallagher — ERCOT Approves Implementing New Batch Zero Process for Large Load Interconnections + Governor Abbott Press Release Jun 10 2026 — Directs PUC and ERCOT to Shield Texans from Data Center Infrastructure Costs + ZeroEmissionGrid Workshop Summary Jun 11 2026 — Batch Zero Readiness + OPUC Order 26-154 Oregon Schedule 96 (May 2026) ↗