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 o
