A $1 letter of credit stood behind a 1.8-GW data centre reservation
Serguey Asael Shinder2 min readThe Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on 22 September 2026 rejected Commonwealth Edison's notice of cancellation of a transmission service agreement tied to a data centre being developed by PowerHouse Hillwood Holding in Joliet, Illinois — a 1.8-GW, $20-billion project. Utility Dive reported the decision on 23 September.
The dispute turns on the agreement's credit support requirements. According to FERC's decision, PowerHouse Hillwood contends it met the initial credit requirement with a $1 posting. Commissioner David LaCerte put the figure where it belongs, calling it less than the price of a cup of coffee.
FERC declined to assert primary jurisdiction over the contract dispute, which is pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, saying the courts can work it out just as well as the federal agency.
What it means
The dollar is not a clerical error, it is the question. A transmission service agreement's credit requirement exists so that the party reserving capacity has something at risk. If an initial posting of one dollar satisfies it, the agreement reserves 1.8 GW of grid capacity against essentially no commitment — and every other customer waiting in the interconnection queue is behind a position that costs nothing to hold.
And FERC's refusal to take jurisdiction is the more consequential half. By sending the contract fight to the district court while rejecting the cancellation, the Commission leaves the agreement standing for now and declines to make this a precedent about how much credit support a data centre must post. The question that the whole sector wants answered — what a hyperscale load has to put behind a reservation — stays unanswered at the federal level.
Which is why this is a markets story and not a legal curiosity. Grid capacity is being allocated to loads of unprecedented size, the queue is the scarce resource, and the price of holding a place in it is currently being litigated one contract at a time.