T-7 ERCOT ILLE Form W Jul 10 / T-21 Form W step 2 Jul 24 / PJM 2028-29 auction closes Jul 7 / results Jul 14 / price band $175-325 MW-day / 13-state governor pre-negotiated band / MD FERC ratepayer complaint comment deadline Jul 27 extended / NY A11560 not delivered to Hochul / 10-day clock not started / passive enactment plausible / 4 deadline-anchored windows next 24 days

Plain-English background on why the four operational-track deadlines all matter this month. Each of these deadlines drives a specific action by developers, hyperscalers, or state parties, and each represents a concrete moment where Cliff can produce a deadline-anchored artifact. **ERCOT Batch Zero — T-7 to July 10, then T-21 to July 24.** Yesterday's newsletter covered this in detail. The Interconnecting Large Load Entity (the data center operator) must complete, sign, and notarize Form W Part A and submit it to the serving Transmission Service Provider or Distribution Service Provider by July 10, 2026. The TSP/DSP then submits the completed form plus supporting modeling data (including the minimum Load Participation Commitment limit per study year) to ERCOT by July 24. This is a two-step deadline chain. Miss July 10 and the load drops into the standard interconnection queue, which now holds more than 438,000 MW of proposed demand (89% data centers per ERCOT's own trending topic PDF from June 18), and which is estimated 3-5 years slower than the Batch Zero pathway. For a hyperscaler with a Texas site targeting a 2028 or 2029 go-live, missing July 10 is functionally a project restart. Form W is now officially posted on ERCOT's Large Load Integration page. **PJM 2028/29 capacity auction — bidding window closes T+4 (Tuesday July 7), results July 14.** PJM's Base Residual Auction for the June 2028 to May 2029 delivery year opened Monday June 30 and closes Tuesday July 7. Results will be reported after 4 PM Eastern on July 14. This auction is structurally different from the last two auctions in one important way: the price band was pre-negotiated by the governors of all 13 PJM states before bidding opened. Prices are floored at $175/MW-day and capped at approximately $325/MW-day (specifically the FERC-approved cap that was $329.17/MW-day in prior cycles). This means the 2028/29 auction cannot produce a runaway clearing price like the 2027/28 auction did (which cleared at the FERC cap, driving a projected $1.4 billion in additional capacity market costs across PJM ratepayers starting June 2026). For data centers colocated in PJM, this establishes a clear ceiling on 2028/29 capacity-related electricity cost inputs — which is a legitimate positive for hyperscaler bookings modeling. It's also a first-of-kind precedent for state-governor pre-negotiation of RTO price bands, which is a structural political shift worth logging. **Maryland ratepayer-cost-allocation complaint at FERC — comment deadline extended to July 27.** On June 17, 80 Maryland state lawmakers formally supported a complaint at FERC over how PJM allocates costs for transmission lines built specifically to serve new data center load. The core allegation: PJM's current cost-allocation framework spreads transmission-upgrade costs across all ratepayers in the affected zone, meaning Maryland residential and small commercial customers pay for high-voltage transmission upgrades that primarily benefit hyperscaler data center customers. The relief sought is a rule change that would allocate those upgrade costs specifically to the load driving them. FERC extended the comment deadline to July 27 to give more state parties time to weigh in. This is directly analogous to Virginia's rate-class filing at the Virginia State Corporation Commission (approved November 2025, effective January 2027) that already imposed 85% distribution and 60% generation demand cost recovery on large data center customers. Maryland is now trying to accomplish through federal (FERC) rulemaking what Virginia already accomplished through state (SCC) rulemaking. If FERC grants the Maryland complaint, that becomes a PJM-wide precedent affecting Ohio, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and every other PJM state — a much more consequential outcome than a single state rate class filing. **Hochul still not formally delivered NY A11560 — 10-day gubernatorial clock hasn't started.** The New York Legislature passed the Responsible Data Center Development Act (S10642 / A11560) on June 4, 2026 — a 1-year moratorium on Department of Environmental Conservation permits for data centers ≥20 MW. Under the New York constitution, once a passed bill is formally delivered to the Governor's desk, she has 10 days to sign or veto it, and failure to act allows the bill to become law without signature. As of yesterday's tracker check, the bill has NOT yet been formally delivered. This is a common Albany maneuver — the Legislature delays delivery to give the governor flexibility on veto timing. Once delivered, Hochul has 10 days. That means the actual signature/veto/passive-enactment window is still ahead. Given Hochul's public equivocation ('review it in context...status quo can't continue'), a passive enactment via non-action is a plausible political landing spot — she avoids the labor / building-trades backlash of a signature and avoids the environmentalist backlash of a veto. Watch for the formal delivery date; it starts the 10-day clock. Why the four deadlines matter together. Each is a discrete deadline-anchored moment. ERCOT Form W is the Texas developer-execution moment. PJM 2028/29 auction close and results are the wholesale-power-cost bounding moment. Maryland FERC comment is the state-party political-alignment moment. New York A11560 delivery starts the New York state-clock. All four are inside a 24-day window. That's an unusually compressed calendar of discrete buying-signal events, and Cliff should be reaching out to every ERCOT-adjacent, PJM-adjacent, and NYISO-adjacent developer contact this week with a specific deadline-anchored offer.

Primary source · ERCOT — Large Load Integration Page + PJM Inside Lines — PJM Capacity Auction for 2028/2029 Delivery Year Opens (Jun 30 2026) + PJM — 2028/2029 Base Residual Auction Documents (Jun 30 2026) + Utility Dive — Maryland lawmakers back data center transmission cost complaint at FERC + Utility Dive — FERC extends comment deadline on PJM data center transmission complaint + Greenberg Traurig — New York Legislature Passes Data Center Moratorium; Bill Awaits Governor's Approval + Harris Beach Murtha — New York State Legislature Passes First-in-the-Nation Data Center Moratorium ↗