Enverus has graded the grid operators on how ready they are for data centers, using the five reform areas FERC laid out in its June show-cause orders. The finding is that the regions attracting the most development are, almost without exception, the least prepared to connect it. Some are well along, a few have barely started, and ERCOT is rewriting its own rulebook outside FERC’s reach.

I wouldn’t call that a paradox. Land is cheap and power looks available on paper, so developers arrive early, and a region with a lot of slack in its queue is exactly the one that hasn’t had to build the rules for rationing it. The ones with tight, well-governed processes are tight because they’ve already been burned. Readiness and attractiveness pull in opposite directions, at least until the first big fight over who pays.

PJM has been that fight all month. FERC rejected most of its large-load plan on the 13th and its chair called the situation a “mess.” The auction for backstop supply got delayed. Reading those next to a report card makes the grade feel almost redundant.

The report also says the legal and structural burden lands on utilities, while developers and investors “navigate largely on their own” through a patchwork of timelines, costs and risk. Sixty-two gigawatts by 2030 is the number everyone is planning around, and nobody seems to be asking what happens if half of it is speculative. I’d want to see the grade for that.

One caveat: this sits in a sponsored-content slot on the trade site, so it reads partly as a pitch for the consulting. Still, the ranking logic holds up without the pitch.

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