Grid access for AI is now conditional, and PJM wants the proof before 2027

The procurement decision behind a June 2027 site has to close long before June 2027. PJM wants evidence of new supply on March 1, final verification on April 1, and only then service on June 1 ^[8]. Forbes columnist Robert Szczerba, who worked through the filing, says project teams fix on the service date and never notice the proof date sitting three months in front of it ^[9].

PJM will accept four kinds of proof ^[7]. Two of them are unavailable to anyone who starts shopping now. GE Vernova's turbine slots are booked through 2031, with its backlog at 116 gigawatts this summer ^[10], which is at least four years the wrong side of the proof deadline ^[2]. Connecting a new plant is slower again: more than five years for half of all projects ^[11], and of everything that entered those queues between 2000 and 2020, only 13 percent was running by the end of 2025 ^[12], meaning 87 percent was not ^[3]. Building on site skips the queue, which is most of the reason to do it ^[13].

That leaves the uprate, the restart, and the pledge to cut demand on request. The last one deserves a second read, because it is the same physical behaviour PJM would otherwise extract at a discount: qualifying curtailable load earns the full rate, while interim service earns half and PJM has floated waiving even that ^[6]. The identical willingness to go quiet is worth double depending on which side of the qualification line it was documented ^[4].

PJM's reason sits in its capacity auction, which hit the price ceiling and still came up 6,831 megawatts short, the second consecutive miss ^[14]. Measured against the filing's own threshold, that gap is about 137 sites of 50 megawatts ^[1]. The operator's argument is that interim service is a way to connect now rather than wait years for supply that does not exist, with cuts confined to real shortages ^[15]. The trade is that the customer carries the risk of being cut until it delivers the new megawatts on PJM's schedule ^[18].

Texas, which sits outside federal reach and did not wait to be told, froze its queue on August 3 and put 250 to 300 projects seeking 200 gigawatts under audit, more than double the most power the state has ever drawn at once ^[17]. PJM, which runs the grid for 67 million people ^[3], filed on August 13 ^[2], 56 days after the order and four days inside its window ^[5]. Whoever signs an AI capacity plan from here is signing a generation project with a documentation date attached.