The North American Electric Reliability Corporation said on Oct. 15, 2026 that its package of reliability standards for large computational loads, a category that covers AI data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations, passed final industry ballot. The standards, developed under NERC Project 2026-02, now go to the NERC Board of Trustees for adoption and then to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. NERC said the standards "establish requirements to support the reliable integration of large computational loads into the bulk power system," according to Utility Dive.

The American Public Power Association described the package as NERC's foundational Computational Loads Reliability Standards, approved on final ballot together with their implementation plans.

Three new standards and two revisions

According to POWER Magazine, the package contains three new standards, targeted revisions to two existing facility standards, and three implementation plans:

  • CLO-001-1 covers interconnection studies, commissioning, and planning-model data, including ride-through and dynamic-response modeling.
  • CLO-002-1 covers operational data and communications between computational-load facilities and grid entities. Its Requirement R8 requires operators to follow operating instructions unless the instructions cannot be physically implemented or would violate safety, equipment, regulatory or statutory requirements. Under R9, an operator that cannot comply must notify the entity that issued the instruction.
  • CLO-003-1 covers protection-setting coordination and sequence-of-events, fault and dynamic disturbance recording.
  • FAC-001-5 and FAC-002-5, existing facility-interconnection standards, receive targeted revisions to avoid duplicating the new requirements.

The phase-in periods differ by standard, POWER reported. Under CLO-001-1, planning coordinators get three months to define qualified changes and modeling-data specifications, with remaining study, commissioning and owner obligations due at nine months. Under CLO-002-1, transmission operators, balancing authorities and reliability coordinators get six months to set data specifications, and computational-load owners and operators get 12 months to meet the data, communications, operating-instruction and training requirements. Under CLO-003-1, protection-coordination requirements begin after nine months; existing sites have 36 months to meet the recording requirements, while new sites have until 15 months after the effective date or their in-service date, whichever is later.

Who would be covered

The standards would apply to computational loads of at least 50 MW served through equipment at 100 kV or above. The original proposal set the threshold at 20 MW and 60 kV, and NERC raised it after stakeholder comments, POWER reported.

NERC's revised registry criteria use the same 50 MW and 100 kV markers. In a Sept. 17 presentation to ERCOT's Large Load Working Group, Mark Henry, NERC's chief engineer and director of reliability outreach, said the proposed CLO-001, CLO-002 and CLO-003 standards and the revised registry criteria had been posted for comment and initial ballot from Aug. 19 to Sept. 18.

The registration side moved separately. On Oct. 8, NERC's board approved Rules of Procedure revisions creating two new functional entities, the Computational Load Owner (CLO) and the Computational Load Operator (CLOP), according to POWER. The registration criteria still require FERC approval.

The APPA noted that Kyle Turpin, its manager for energy policy and reliability standards, serves on the NERC drafting team that wrote the standards.

The events behind the rules

The standards follow incidents in which large computing sites dropped load during grid disturbances. POWER pointed to a July 2024 event in which successive transmission faults in the Eastern Interconnection caused the near-simultaneous loss of about 1,500 MW of data center load, which it attributed to customer-side protection and controls. A NERC review published in January 2026 examined 26 ERCOT events between January 2023 and September 2025 involving cryptocurrency mining loads; each involved reductions of more than 100 MW, with facilities losing 17% to 95% of their pre-disturbance consumption after normally cleared faults, POWER reported.

On May 4, 2026, NERC issued a Level 3 Essential Action Alert listing seven essential actions, after data centers unexpectedly dropped load or rapidly oscillated demand, Utility Dive reported. Registered entities had to acknowledge and report on the alert, but its actions are not mandatory standards, according to POWER. Henry's presentation said NERC had since filed a report to FERC on the alert.

The rules arrive as NERC's own demand outlook rises. NERC projected in January that summer peak demand will grow by 224 GW over the next 10 years, a 24% increase from 2025 peak demand, driven largely by data centers, according to Utility Dive.

FERC set the schedule. Its July 16 order requires NERC to file the initial computational-load standards and registration criteria by Dec. 31, 2026, POWER reported. Minimum voltage and frequency ride-through requirements are not part of this package, and additional Standard Authorization Requests are in development. Henry's presentation placed Project 2026-02 within NERC's Large Loads Action Plan for 2026–2027.

What Happens Next

  • NERC Board of Trustees, fourth quarter of 2026: The board votes on adopting the standards and implementation plans; Utility Dive reported the vote is expected in the fourth quarter.
  • FERC filing, by Dec. 31, 2026: After board adoption, NERC files the standards with FERC for approval in the United States. For Canada, NERC will coordinate with applicable governmental authorities, the APPA said.
  • Additional standards work plan, by March 1, 2027: NERC must submit a work plan for further computational-load standards, according to POWER.
  • Q4 2026 standards requests: The Large Load Working Group work plan in Henry's presentation lists two Standard Authorization Requests for the fourth quarter: one studying computational load loss in planning and near-term reliability studies, and one on computational load event reporting, model validation and quality assessment. A separate request on disturbance performance requirements finished its public comment period on Sept. 24.
  • Level 3 alert public report, late fall 2026: Henry's presentation said a public report on the alert would follow NERC's FERC filing.
  • Compliance dates: Each standard's phase-in period runs from its effective date, which has not been set and depends on regulatory approval.

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