PJM Plans Power Cuts for Large Data Centres
From June 2027, PJM plans to curtail large electricity users during shortages, turning data centres into controllable grid loads rather than untouchable demand.
Large data centres connected to the PJM grid may face temporary power cuts during periods of shortage from June 2027.
What happened
PJM Interconnection plans to curtail facilities using at least 50MW when the grid is under severe pressure. Participating customers would be compensated for reducing consumption.
The policy targets data centres and other large users whose demand can arrive faster than new generation and transmission infrastructure can be built.
Why it matters
AI infrastructure has usually been treated as constant electricity demand. Curtailment changes that assumption by making large facilities controllable grid resources.
Operators may respond with batteries, flexible scheduling or onsite generation. Some computing tasks can be shifted to another time or location, but latency-sensitive services and training runs are harder to interrupt.
There is also a climate trade-off: if operators rely heavily on diesel backup generators during curtailment, the grid may avoid blackouts while local emissions increase.
The bigger picture
The race to build AI capacity is colliding with the physical limits of power systems. Future data centres will be judged not only by how much electricity they can secure, but by how intelligently they can reduce, store or relocate demand when the grid is strained.