PECO-Amazon Transmission Deal Exposes the Electricity Capacity Charge Gap Indiana Manufacturers Are Carrying

FERC approved a transmission security agreement between PECO Energy and Amazon Data Services in November 2025 for a two-million-square-foot hyperscale campus in Falls Township, Pennsylvania. These agreements function as take-or-pay contracts, data centers post a 10-year letter of credit covering transmission upgrade costs. What they don't cover: supply and capacity costs, which account for roughly half of a typical utility bill. PECO's own spokesperson confirmed that directly.

Here's the Indiana-specific number. PJM's independent market monitor found that data centers drove PJM wholesale power costs up 54% in 2025 to $67 billion, with capacity costs rising 262% year-over-year. FERC declined to assess ratepayer harm as outside the scope of the proceeding. Indiana and Michigan Electric sits in PJM and is directly exposed to that 262% increase. NIPSCO sits in MISO, where capacity prices hit $666 per megawatt-day in the 2025/26 auction. Neither the IURC's February 2025 large-load tariff nor NIPSCO's GenCo structure addresses electricity capacity charge pass-through to existing industrial ratepayers, those frameworks cover transmission cost allocation and new-load supply. Pull your most recent bill and identify the capacity charge line item as a percentage of the total. Then ask your energy advisor what your exposure looks like if that number doubles before 2028.