410 Gigawatts. That number requires context.

In the final hours of the 2026 legislative session — a night Maryland legislators call Sine Die, when bills either cross the finish line or die — the Maryland General Assembly passed the most consequential utility legislation the state has seen in a generation. Governor Moore is expected to sign it immediately.

The Utility RELIEF Act started as Senate Bill 841. It ended as something significantly larger. The final bill incorporated all or part of at least 18 bills introduced this session, becoming the largest omnibus energy bill in memory for the Maryland General Assembly.

The $150 annual ratepayer rebate gets the headlines. What matters more for GR professionals is what the bill does to the regulatory environment that every Maryland utility now operates in.

The bill imposes a one-year moratorium on forecasted ratemaking — the method utilities use to recover costs based on projected future infrastructure spending rather than actual dollars already spent. That moratorium hits the Pepco rate case directly. BGE and Delmarva Power face the same constraint.

The bill also establishes new large-load customer rules with data center-specific provisions, requires the PSC to create a registry for large load customers, lowers the threshold at which a data center qualifies for a large load rate schedule, and mandates a clean capacity rating program.

The regulatory implications are not simple. A moratorium on forecasted ratemaking sounds like a win for ratepayers — and in the short term it is. In the medium term, it constrains how utilities make the capital investment case at the PSC, which could slow the grid modernization that data center load growth demands. Every GR team at a Maryland utility is now working through what this means for their next rate filing.

Governor Moore left no ambiguity about where he stands: “Bills aren’t rising because households are suddenly using more power. They are rising because our people are stuck in a system that is actively working against them.”

The Pepco rate case — Case No. 9820 — is the first major proceeding that will be shaped by this new legal environment. Watch the PSC’s implementation guidance, expected by fall 2026. That guidance will set the rules of engagement for every Maryland utility proceeding through at least 2027.

That number deserves its own moment.

The state of Texas currently uses roughly 85 to 90 gigawatts at peak. The data center and AI industry has submitted interconnection requests for more than four times that amount. Not all of it will get built. But even a fraction of it getting built rewires the entire cost allocation calculus for every utility, every ratepayer, and every regulator in the state.

In March 2026, the PUCT voted to publish draft rule 16 TAC §25.194, implementing SB 6’s requirement to create interconnection standards for new loads of 75 MW or greater. The rule has teeth: non-refundable fees of $50,000 per megawatt or more before ERCOT will even begin an interconnection study. Site control documentation. Mandatory disclosure of parallel or affiliated interconnection requests — meaning a company can’t quietly queue up the same project multiple times under different entities.

The data center industry is pushing back on the site control disclosure provisions, arguing they could compromise economic development incentive eligibility. Most states require that a company not be publicly “committed” to a location before an incentive is granted. The PUCT is aware of the tension and has not resolved it.

The large-load interconnection standards rule is targeted for final adoption by July 2026. Everything in the 410-gigawatt queue is waiting for it.

Patrick Rhode — the corporate affairs and government relations professional appointed by Governor Abbott to the PUCT on April 1 — is now sitting on the commission that will finalize these rules. His background is not technical utility. It is stakeholder strategy and infrastructure deal-making. That appointment was not accidental.