FirstEnergy reported third-quarter 2026 results on October 27, with the call the following day, and the headline numbers were strong: core earnings of $0.98 per share, up from $0.83 a year earlier and ahead of the $0.90 Wall Street estimate, on revenue of $4.56 billion against $4.1 billion a year earlier. But the earnings beat is not the story. The story is what sits underneath it: a contract book that has nearly doubled in ten months, and a petition before FERC that would rewrite who pays for the transmission to serve it.
The load numbers split the way this market now demands they be split: signed contracts on one side, pipeline on the other. FirstEnergy now holds 7.9 gigawatts of contracted data-center demand through 2036, up roughly 90 percent since year-end 2025 and up from 6.4 gigawatts just one quarter earlier — 1.5 gigawatts of new signed load in three months. Behind that sits a pipeline of about 19 gigawatts, roughly 4 gigawatts of which is in active contract negotiations, bringing the contracted-plus-pipeline total to about 26 gigawatts, up nearly 60 percent since year-end. As chief executive Brian Tierney put it on the call, the company does not put uncontracted demand in its plan. A signed contract is the difference between a forecast and a fact.
The contract book: 7.9 GW signed, and West Virginia is almost all pipeline
The geography of the book is uneven in ways that matter. The company’s earnings deck breaks the 2036 totals down by state, contracted first and pipeline second: Ohio, 2,570 megawatts contracted and 6,790 in pipeline; Maryland, 3,045 contracted and 1,585 in pipeline; Pennsylvania, 2,010 contracted and 3,400 in pipeline; West Virginia, 175 contracted and 5,870 in pipeline. Maryland holds the largest contracted share; Ohio the largest pipeline. West Virginia holds the most lopsided book of all — nearly everything there is still a prospect, not a signature.
That lopsidedness is also where the growth is fastest: West Virginia pipeline demand has risen roughly sixfold since January to nearly 6 gigawatts, and the state’s contracted-plus-pipeline total rose from 4.3 gigawatts three months ago to about 6 gigawatts in the third quarter. The state passed its High Impact Data Center Program in 2025. But 175 megawatts contracted against 5,870 in pipeline is a reminder of what a pipeline is: developers talking, studying, and reserving optionality — not yet customers paying bills.
The ramp behind the totals is the number that decides when the power has to be there. The company’s deck puts contracted and pipeline demand at 2,190 megawatts in 2026, rising to 13,120 megawatts by 2031, on the way to 26,950 megawatts by 2036. The first wave is expected online around 2030, but Tierney said the hyperscalers his teams talk to are planning well past that first wave — a ten-year backlog, not a one-quarter headline.
The quarter behind the load
The financial quarter underneath the load story was solid without being spectacular, and the distinction is worth keeping. GAAP earnings were $0.96 per share, up from $0.76 a year earlier. Nine-month core earnings reached $2.20 per share, up 9 percent from 2025. Management reaffirmed full-year 2026 core earnings guidance of $2.62 to $2.82 per share and said it expects results at or slightly above the $2.72 midpoint. The beat came from rates and investment programs, growing demand, and a slightly lower effective tax rate.
What the load growth is buying, in capital terms, is a bigger transmission plan. FirstEnergy said data-center demand will drive at least a 25 percent increase over its current $19 billion transmission investment plan — $4.75 billion of additional transmission spending — on top of a broader $36 billion investment plan for 2026 through 2030.
The unit economics explain why the transmission number grows so fast. Chief financial officer Jon Taylor estimated about $250 million of network upgrades for each gigawatt of contracted demand. At that rate, the 7.9 gigawatts already under contract implies $2 billion of network upgrades — before a single megawatt of the 19-gigawatt pipeline converts. Every gigawatt of signed load carries a quarter of a billion dollars of wires with it, and someone has to pay for those wires.
The petition: make the causer pay
FirstEnergy’s answer to that question has been sitting before FERC since June. On Friday, June 5, the company urged the commission to require data centers to pay the full cost of the transmission upgrades their interconnections require, instead of spreading those costs across existing customers as current practice does. The proposal is modeled on the cost-allocation method used for natural gas pipelines for more than 25 years: the customer whose project causes the infrastructure pays for it.
Under the proposal, data-center customers would pay two rate components under 15-year contracts with collateral requirements: their share of the existing zonal transmission rate, plus an expansion rate covering the network upgrades needed to interconnect their facilities. The filing’s language was blunt. “American households are being asked to pay for transmission infrastructure built to serve hyperscale data centers,” FirstEnergy wrote. “Under FERC’s current rules, when a utility constructs new high-voltage transmission lines and substations to connect a single new data center, the cost of that infrastructure is spread across all customers in the surrounding regions.”
The logic of FirstEnergy’s position is the same logic Southern Company and Evergy apply through minimum bills and collateral in their own large-load contracts: the customer causing the investment funds it, for long enough and with enough security that existing customers are not left holding stranded infrastructure. The difference is jurisdictional. Southern’s and Evergy’s protections live in state-regulated retail contracts. FirstEnergy is asking a federal regulator to write the same principle into the interstate transmission tariff — which would make it a precedent for every large load in PJM, not just its own.
What FERC has done since June
The commission has moved, but not toward a quick answer. On June 18, FERC issued show-cause orders to PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO New England, and NYISO, finding that their tariffs may not adequately address the network upgrade costs and cost shifting that large loads present, and asking each operator to justify its arrangements or propose changes. FERC set November 16 for responses from five of the operators, with SPP’s due November 20. That deadline falls three days after this edition publishes.
October brought a decision that shows how unsettled the framework still is. On October 9, FERC rejected most of PJM’s proposal for connecting large loads during periods of insufficient generating capacity — the Interim Resource Adequacy Service framework and its bring-your-own-new-capacity provisions — while accepting a large-load definition and registry. The same day, the commission approved Duke Energy Carolinas’ transmission agreement changes, including a 15-year minimum revenue commitment for qualifying large loads. Together they say FERC will bless long-term payment commitments from individual large loads, but not yet a regional framework letting loads connect without matching capacity.
What lands on November 16 will shape the next phase. PJM plans to file a proposal for a unified cluster study — what it now calls “Fast Energization” — that would evaluate large-load and generation interconnection requests together in a single annual process taking roughly a year, and the PJM transmission owners have circulated a portfolio-based cost-allocation methodology for the upgrades each cluster identifies. That methodology is already contested: the American Clean Power Association has objected that portfolio-wide allocation risks charging generators for upgrades driven predominantly by large load. FirstEnergy’s June petition and the transmission owners’ November filing are now two different answers to the same question, converging on the same deadline.
Maidsville: the test case
While the federal argument plays out, the state-level test case is a gas plant in West Virginia. Mon Power and Potomac Edison, FirstEnergy’s two West Virginia utilities, filed with the state Public Service Commission on February 13 for a certificate to build the Maidsville Energy Generating Facility: a 1,200-megawatt combined-cycle gas plant on a 35-acre site next to the companies’ existing 1,100-megawatt Fort Martin coal station, alongside 70 megawatts of new solar at three other sites. The plant is a key part of the utilities’ integrated resource plan.
The price tag runs about $2.5 billion to $2.8 billion, depending on the filing — the PSC filing put the combined-cycle plant at $2.84 billion — and the timeline is long by data-center standards. If the commission approves, site work could begin as early as 2027 and the plant would come online in late 2031. The companies expect a decision within a year of the filing, which puts the deadline in February 2027; on the third-quarter call, management said it expects an order in the fourth quarter of 2026. Siemens Energy holds a turbine reservation agreement for the project, with delivery expected in 2030, and the utilities have issued a request for proposals for another 3 gigawatts of combined-cycle turbines to serve data-center load in the state. The companies are seeking to recover Maidsville’s costs through a Generation Projects Surcharge.
Read Maidsville against the West Virginia pipeline, and the tension in FirstEnergy’s position is visible. The plant is rate-based generation, built by regulated utilities and paid for through regulated rates, to serve load that is still almost entirely pipeline — 175 megawatts contracted against nearly 6 gigawatts prospective. The FERC petition argues that data centers should pay the full cost of the transmission their load requires. Maidsville asks West Virginia regulators to approve generation whose costs would be recovered from the rate base before most of that load has signed anything. Management said the remaining major contracts are on track to be signed shortly after the commission issues its order. If the signatures slip, the surcharge does not.
Contracts are the currency
Step back from FirstEnergy, and the quarter sharpens a distinction the whole sector is learning to draw. There are now three different numbers every utility reports, and they mean very different things. The queue is the largest and least reliable: FirstEnergy has said it received requests for more than 95 gigawatts of large-load studies since 2024. The pipeline is the middle number — developers in active discussion, with sites and timelines attached. The contract book is the smallest and the only one a utility can finance against. FirstEnergy’s 7.9 gigawatts is the contract book. Its 26 gigawatts is the pipeline with contracts included. The gap between them is the distance between interest and obligation.
The peers describe the same market three different ways, and the comparison is instructive. Southern Company counts about 21 gigawatts signed, with minimum bills covering at least 100 percent of incremental costs and about $25 billion of collateral expected by 2030. American Electric Power counts 84 gigawatts of incremental contracted load by 2031, 35 gigawatts of it backed by firm take-or-pay agreements, and has announced a $100 billion capital plan. Dominion Energy counts a 54.9-gigawatt Virginia pipeline but treats only 12.2 gigawatts of it as firm contracts, leaving 19 gigawatts out of its forecast entirely. FirstEnergy sits between the poles: a smaller contract book than Southern or AEP, a more disciplined one than a raw pipeline total, and a federal petition that would convert its discipline into a rule everyone else has to follow. That is the real ambition of the June filing. A state commission can approve a tariff for one utility’s customers; a FERC order on cost allocation sets the terms for every large load interconnecting in PJM. FirstEnergy is trying to make the signed contract — 15-year term, collateral, expansion rate — the standard instrument by which data-center load buys its way onto the grid.
What to watch
The milestones, in order: the November 16 filings from PJM and its transmission owners in response to FERC’s show-cause order; the West Virginia commission’s order on Maidsville, expected in the fourth quarter, and whether the major contracts management expects follow it; the conversion of the roughly 4 gigawatts now in active negotiations into signed contracts; the outcome of the request for proposals for 3 additional gigawatts of combined-cycle turbines; and the February capital-plan update.
The bottom line
FirstEnergy’s third quarter delivered the sharpest evidence yet that data-center demand in the PJM footprint is not a forecast but a fact: 7.9 gigawatts under contract, up 90 percent since January, inside a 26-gigawatt pipeline that keeps growing. The earnings beat is the least interesting part of the quarter. The interesting part is what the company is doing with the leverage that demand gives it: asking the federal regulator to make the customers causing the buildout pay for it, at roughly $250 million per gigawatt, under 15-year contracts with collateral behind them.
What the quarter did not deliver is proof that the framework will hold. The FERC proceeding is still open, PJM’s November 16 filing is contested before it arrives, and Maidsville asks West Virginia regulators to approve a roughly $2.7 billion gas plant for load that is still, overwhelmingly, pipeline rather than contract. Signed contracts are now the currency of data-center load growth, and FirstEnergy has more of them than it did in January. Whether that currency buys a cost-allocation precedent is the question the next three months will answer.