Pennsylvania Data Centers Face Increased Oversight Under New Law

By Diana DiGangi of UtilityDive

Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro, signed a budget Sunday which will require data centers to report their exact water and power usage annually to the state. It also requires the PJM Interconnection to give Pennsylvania state regulators additional insight into its demand forecasting.

“The current process by which utilities submit information to PJM lacks transparency for policymakers, regulators and stakeholders,” states House Bill 1924, which was folded into Pennsylvania’s 2026-2027 budget. “There is a need for oversight by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission to ensure accuracy and transparency of load-forecast inputs.”

Data centers in the state will now be required to compile an annual report containing information such as their “estimated average amount of energy usage per hour during the data center’s peak load,” the provision states.

The provision in the budget also requires data centers to submit total energy consumption for the previous calendar year, an estimate of the projected total energy demand for the following year, and “any measures undertaken to generate electricity on site or off site to reduce carbon emissions or impacts on the electric grid, including the specific energy source, and any potential future measures to generate electricity or other form of energy on site or off site,” it states. 

Data centers that fail to comply with the new reporting requirements will be fined $10,000 per day until their report is submitted, according to the budget.

The state Department of Environmental Protection will publish an annual report on the “aggregate energy consumption and water consumption trends for data centers operating [in the state], including environmental impacts and recommendations to address identified issues.”

Data center development in Pennsylvania has boomed, with utility PPL Electric reporting in May that its “advanced” stage data center pipeline had jumped 12% in three months, from 25.2 GW to 28.3 GW expected by 2034.

The PJM language in the budget will help state agencies “better understand future electricity needs as demand continues to increase,” said state Sen. Gene Yaw, R, who sponsored the original legislation, in a Monday release.

Shapiro was one of the PJM state governors who in September threatened to pull their states out of PJM’s markets unless they were given a role in governing the organization. “If PJM refuses to change, we will be forced to go in a different direction,” he said. “That is not a path that I am eager to chart, but I am not willing to stand idly by and let PJM dictate our future.”

An October memo about the legislation, circulated by Yaw and Sen. Nick Miller, D, said that “the process by which utilities and load-serving entities submit information to PJM is opaque, and policymakers, regulators, and stakeholders lack confidence in the data’s reliability.”

The Pennsylvania PUC “showed one utility is projecting its load to grow over the next 9 years by over 200% while the next closest utility was at 11% over the same period,” the memo said. “Such a wide disparity raises questions about how Pennsylvania utilities are evaluating requests for new service from large customers and relaying that information to PJM.”

The legislation gives the Pennsylvania PUC the authority to “review and validate load forecasts submitted by Pennsylvania utilities to PJM,” “coordinate with PJM and other state regulators to ensure accuracy and prevent duplicative counting of projects and contracts,” and “access all relevant materials necessary to carry out this oversight,” the memo said.