NWPPA Morning Brief

NWPPA Morning Brief - Tuesday, June 02, 2026

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NWPPA Morning Brief — Tuesday, June 02, 2026

In today's brief:

Top Federal Developments

AI and Large Load Demand Radar

Worth Knowing

Pilot notice: AI-generated daily briefing. Verify before acting on it.

Feel free to reach out if you have comments or concerns.

Before we begin, a quick note. The NWPPA morning brief is Generative AI, daily intelligence on the federal and Western developments shaping public power. It isn't human-reviewed before publication, so treat it like any AI tool and verify what you'll act on or cite. Sources are in the show notes. You're listening to the NWPPA morning brief. On today's brief, a FERC commissioner signals a tougher posture toward PJM on interconnection queue performance. PJM's market monitor asks FERC to put conditions on a $1.5 billion data center gas plant acquisition. A hyperscaler funded transmission build in Virginia raises cost allocation questions relevant to the West, energy prices in motion after Iran talks collapse, and a critical firewall vulnerability under active exploitation at IT and OT boundaries. Today's briefing is brought to you by the Northwest Public Power Association. Stronger workforce, greater influence, informed decisions, serving community-owned electric utilities across the West since 1940. The story with the longest tale today is the PJM market monitor filing on the MARA Long Ridge acquisition. It's the first time a grid operator's independent monitor has formally asked FERC to condition a large load deal on keeping generation in the wholesale market rather than redirecting it behind the meter to serve a co-located data center. If FERC grants those conditions, utilities and state regulators across the West have a federal template for exactly the kind of negotiation they're already facing on large load interconnection requests. And it lands the same week a FERC commissioner is publicly signaling the Commission may push grid operators harder on Q throughput. These two signals together suggest FERC is starting to draw a line around generation as a shared grid asset, not just a private amenity for the largest buyer. Let's start with that FERC posture story and work forward. The FERC Commissioner signal on PJM came from Commissioner David Lesert, speaking on a public podcast. His point was direct, the Commission is considering more aggressive use of its authority over PJM to speed interconnection as AI-driven demand and rising prices stress the 13-state grid. This isn't a formal rulemaking yet, but it's a public signal from inside the Commission that patients with Q performance is running thin. For Western utilities tracking interconnection reform at CAISO and SPP, this matters because it tells you the regulatory posture is hardening nationally, not just in PJM's footprint. The question worth asking is whether that same pressure eventually finds its way into Western market structure proceedings. FERC has shown before that it will use one region as a proving ground and extend the logic. If you're involved in EDAM or watching how CAISO handles its own Q backlog, this is a development to keep in the frame. Turning to the Mara Long Ridge deal, PJM's independent market monitor asked FERC to approve the $1.5 billion acquisition of the 522 megawatt Long Ridge gas plant, only on the condition that Mara Holdings keeps the plant's output in PJM's wholesale market. The concern is capacity adequacy. Pulling 522 megawatts out of merchant dispatch to serve behind-the-meter data center load tightens capacity for everyone else on the grid. That framing, resource adequacy as a public obligation rather than a negotiable deal term, is the part that travels west. If FERC imposes those conditions, it gives utilities here a real precedent to point to when they're negotiating large load interconnection agreements. Right now, those conversations are happening without much federal architecture around them. A FERC order with conditions attached gives state regulators and utility councils something concrete to work with on protecting existing customers. Moving to the Appalachian Power Transmission Build in Virginia, the structure here is straightforward. Google is funding 17 miles of 138 kilovolt line replacement, four substation upgrades, and a new substation to serve a planned data center in Daleville, with the utility saying the work also benefits regional customers. Western public power utilities are already fielding similar requests, so this is a live reference point. The part that isn't resolved yet is how the in-service cost allocation gets treated at the rate case level. Calling it a shared benefit is easy at the press release stage. Quantifying what portion of a substation sized for a single hyperscaler actually benefits existing ratepayers is a harder conversation. WTI closed up 5.5% on June 1st after Iranian state-aligned media reported Tehran was cutting off talks with Washington, bringing Strait of Hormuz supply concerns back into the market. The $91.72 intraday quote on June 2nd reflects continued volatility around those headlines, not a settled direction. Comex Copper settled at $6.68 per pound on June 1st, up from $6.52. Next up, the cybersecurity alert. Ciesa added an authentication bypass flaw in Palo Alto Network's firewalls to its known exploited vulnerabilities catalog, meaning it's under active exploitation now. The specific risk for utilities is where these firewalls sit, at IT and OT network boundaries, which makes an unpatched authentication bypass vulnerability a direct path toward operational technology exposure. Federal civilian agencies are required to patch on CISA's timeline, but the practical question for utility security teams is whether their patch deployment is already in motion. If Palo Alto firewalls are in your environment at any ITOT boundary, this isn't a wait-and-see item. One to watch today, coming back to the FERC posture on large load and generation adequacy. Both the PJM market monitor filing and the commissioner's public comments are pre-decisional. FERC hasn't issued an order, and Lassert's comments aren't commission policy. But the direction is unusually clear for signals at this stage. What to track is whether FERC issues a formal data request or technical conference on co-located load and wholesale market obligations. That would confirm the posture is moving toward rulemaking rather than staying in the commentary stage. Western utilities with large load interconnection requests already in queue should be watching that signal closely. If FERC establishes a federal framework for how generation capacity gets treated in these deals, it will shape every negotiation that follows. Today's session leaves you with two federal signals pointing the same direction. FERC willing to push grid operators harder on Q performance, and FERC potentially willing to condition large load acquisitions to protect capacity adequacy. Neither is final. Both are worth tracking before your next large load conversation. The Iran-related crude volatility and the Palo Alto firewall vulnerability are the near term operational items. The interconnection and capacity adequacy questions are where the longer term cost and planning exposure sits.