PG&E's Flex Connect Pilot Claims 90% Grid Availability as Data Center Applicants Push to 10 MW
The California utility's curtailment-based interconnection program works for smaller industrial loads, but data center and manufacturing customers seeking 10 MW face an untested model.
Pacific Gas & Electric reported on Wednesday (2026-09-02) that customers in its Flex Connect pilot could access distribution grid capacity in 90% of hours, presenting the figure as evidence that curtailment-based connections offer a workable route to faster grid hookups for industrial customers.3
The program works by offering expedited interconnection to customers who agree to have PG&E limit their output when the distribution system is constrained. Most active and prospective Flex Connect sites fall in the 2 MW to 5 MW range. But data center and manufacturing prospects are applying for connections reaching 10 MW, PG&E said, testing the upper limits of what the pilot was designed to handle.3
One of the program's clearest working examples is a WattEV electric truck charging depot in Fresno, California. The site operates 15 240-kW charging ports and seven ports capable of delivering upwards of 1 MW each, and can draw up to 3.6 MW during most hours of the year, Simes said. It is high-load infrastructure, but the kind whose energy use can flex without disrupting core operations.3
Data center demand presents a harder case. Hyperscale operators and colocation providers typically write uptime guarantees into customer contracts, and even occasional utility-imposed curtailment can breach those terms. The 90% availability figure PG&E cites means the system may restrict output for roughly 876 hours in a given year. For a commercial EV charging depot, that is manageable. For a data center hosting live workloads, it is generally disqualifying.3
The pressure on programs like Flex Connect reflects how quickly data center construction has outrun grid planning. Bloomberg NEF analysts said on Wednesday (2026-07-22) that two scenarios for U.S. data center electricity demand by 2030 diverge by 42 GW, reflecting genuine disagreement about the buildout's pace. A BNEF model built around expected AI chip deliveries puts total U.S. data center load at 207 GW by 2033. Bank of America analysts estimated data centers could add roughly 125 GW of U.S. electric load over the same period.1
Actual construction has been running ahead of all those projections. Installed data center capacity reached 47 GW by the end of last year, 16% above BNEF's prior forecast. Almost all U.S. regions ended 2025 with more data center capacity than BNEF had anticipated, with Texas accounting for the largest gap between forecast and actual buildout, according to the report. "We track data centers across the U.S. and in the last year, we've added about 100 GW of project capacity," Bloomberg NEF Senior Associate Nathalie Limandibhratha said on Wednesday (2026-07-22). BNEF's base case sits in the middle of third-party estimates, its analysts said, which puts the upper scenarios well within plausible range.1
The mismatch between projected demand and available grid infrastructure is widening internationally too. Analysts told Montel during the week of 2026-08-03 that projected UK data centre power demand was approaching nearly three times Britain's current peak winter consumption, with grid capacity constraints continuing to delay projects. Flexible interconnection programs are one tool utilities are deploying in response, but they were designed for the load scale of commercial and light industrial customers, not hyperscale campuses.2
PG&E has not disclosed how many Flex Connect applicants are seeking connections at the upper end of the 10 MW range, or what curtailment terms those customers have been offered. The pilot's 90% availability rate validates the program for smaller commercial and industrial loads. Whether data center developers will accept curtailment agreements at 10 MW, or conclude that a longer standard interconnection queue delivers more bankable capacity, is the practical question the next round of applications will start to answer.3