FirstEnergy Data Center Contracts Hit 6.4 GW as PJM Capacity Costs Surge
FirstEnergy's data center pipeline jumped 50% in a single quarter, adding to grid strain that already pushed PJM capacity costs to $16.4 billion.
FirstEnergy's utilities had contracts to serve 6.4 gigawatts of data center load by 2035 as of Wednesday (2026-07-30), up 50% from where the pipeline stood at the end of the first quarter, CEO Brian Tierney told analysts on an earnings call. Tierney added that deals for another 1.5 GW were expected to close within two weeks of that call.8
The pace of that growth illustrates how quickly load forecasts are becoming obsolete for utilities in the mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes region. PJM Interconnection's just-completed capacity auction produced $16.4 billion in total charges, of which $6.3 billion — 38% of the total — was attributable to data center demand, according to Joseph Bowring at Monitoring Analytics, the grid operator's independent market monitor.7
The auction numbers are stark. All zones cleared at $554.72 per megawatt-day for the 2028/2029 delivery period except the ComEd local delivery area, which cleared at $776.69. A regulatory price cap was binding; without it, Bowring's analysis suggests prices would have been roughly 70% higher. PJM also came up 6.8 GW short of its resource target in that auction, a deficit that sits directly alongside the load growth FirstEnergy is contracting.5
Duke Energy shows a similar trajectory outside PJM territory. Duke CEO Harry Sideris said the company has signed electric service agreements representing 7.6 GW of data center demand, with 15 GW in what he described as a late-stage pipeline, and the utility is backing that with a $103 billion, five-year capital plan that includes 14 GW of new generation.3
The scale of commitments across multiple large utilities raises a straightforward question about deliverability. Contracting gigawatts is not the same as energizing them. Interconnection queues remain long, permitting timelines on new transmission are measured in years, and the gap between signed agreements and electrons flowing to a data center floor can span most of a decade. FirstEnergy's 6.4 GW figure refers to contracts extending to 2035; how much of that load actually materialises on schedule depends on interconnection approvals, construction timelines, and whether hyperscaler buildout plans hold.
FERC has been drawn into the discussion. Officials there have acknowledged the US faces historic challenges securing power for data center expansion, and the agency has been pressed to accelerate transmission permitting and interconnection reforms. Whether those procedural changes move fast enough to match the load commitments utilities are signing is unresolved.4
The capacity auction result complicates the picture for energy buyers in PJM. Prices cleared at their cap — meaning the cap was the binding constraint, not supply adequacy in any conventional sense — and the shortfall of 6.8 GW entered the record at the same time data center operators are adding signed agreements. Buyers expecting flat or declining capacity costs in PJM should take note that the market monitor explicitly flagged data center load as the single largest driver of those charges.5,7
In Europe, the contrast is instructive. Data center power purchase agreement volumes fell from 4.2 GW in 2024 to 2.6 GW in 2025 even as physical capacity buildout accelerated, according to OilPrice reporting, with offshore wind delays and deteriorating PPA price points cited as the friction. That divergence from the US trajectory reflects different grid structures, different interconnection regimes, and different renewable procurement markets — not a different underlying demand curve.2
The equity market has been volatile in its read on who benefits. Fluence Energy's shares closed at $24.16 on May 8, 2026, up 98.2% in a single week after the company disclosed master supply agreements with two hyperscalers and disclosed a $5.6 billion backlog. But shares were down roughly 39% year to date as of that report, suggesting investors have not yet settled on a stable valuation framework for companies exposed to data center power infrastructure.1
SLB and Liberty Energy announced an alliance in July to deliver modular infrastructure and integrated power generation for data center projects, a signal that oilfield services companies are moving to capture a share of behind-the-meter and co-located generation demand.6
The immediate number to track is whether FirstEnergy closes that additional 1.5 GW of contracts within the two-week window Tierney described on the Wednesday (2026-07-30) call. If it does, the company's contracted data center load will have grown from roughly 4.3 GW to nearly 8 GW in the span of one quarter — a rate that would put further pressure on interconnection timelines and force another revision to regional load forecasts well before PJM's next capacity auction cycle opens.8