There is no playbook in print yet for serving data-center load at this speed and scale. The Data Center Task Force is the room where the utilities living it compare notes on how the largest loads get contracted, queued, forecast, and operated, and write the reference the rest of the industry will need.
Data-center load is arriving faster than the playbook for serving it. A single hyperscale request can rival a mid-size city, and utilities are negotiating interconnection, contracts, and policy on terms that did not exist a few years ago.
The industry is full of studies of the problem. What has been almost entirely absent is execution-ready reference material built from actual utility operating experience: the shared picture of current practice that helps utilities with smaller fleets get up the curve and gives the largest a real benchmark. AEIC members are the ones connecting these loads every day, so this is the group writing it down.
The room shares the messy middle of data center pre- and post-energization, where the knowledge of one becomes the knowledge of all. Nothing confidential: every claim in the reference guides is sourced to a docket, tariff, or IRP filing.
How the deal gets done before the load turns on: contracting, deposits and collateral, queue management, load forecasts, the regulatory construct, curtailable and flexible load, and bring-your-own-generation.
What it takes to serve the load once it is real: commissioning, ride-through and stability, balancing, forecasting, curtailment and flexibility, and operating protocols.
Two reference guides, one for each track, reached version 1.0 in July 2026 and are in members’ hands: the Track A Benchmarking Reference Guide, covering commercial practice across nine utilities, and the Track B Operating Reference Guide across eight. Every cell is sourced to a docket, tariff, or IRP filing. Vendor-neutral, peer-reviewed, and member-facing.
The guides are living documents, refreshed against the public record as it moves. When FERC issued Section 206 show cause orders to all six RTOs and ISOs on June 18, 2026 (Docket RM26-4-000), the guides were updated the same month. Bring-your-own-generation earned its place as Track A’s seventh topic the same way, once FERC’s EL25-49 order and the Texas PUCT’s large-load rules put a real public record behind it. Version 2 is targeted for the end of Q3, with working sessions carrying the benchmarking through the fall.
The utilities in this room sit at the leading edge of how large-load service gets done, and the group grows deliberately: recruit large loads, but always ask who and why. One utility membership opens the Task Force and every other committee and program to your whole organization.
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