The Grid Research and Development Act directs the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to adopt rules standardizing the content and format of data that transmitting utilities and Transmission Organizations must file under the Federal Power Act. Required reporting covers project lifecycles, cost and capital structure details, interconnection costs, congestion impacts, technical losses, and use of advanced grid technologies; reports must be machine-readable, searchable, and posted to a single public interface.
The bill also creates a centralized data repository maintained by FERC in collaboration with the Energy Information Administration, mandates a review and modernization of historical FERC Form No.1 filings, and charges the Department of Energy (via National Laboratories) with producing an Interconnection Data Dashboard and periodic research on cost drivers, scenario modeling, and policy options. The package is designed to make transmission and interconnection performance and costs auditable and analyzable — with direct implications for planners, regulators, developers, and ratepayer advocates — while imposing new reporting and IT obligations on utilities and grid operators.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill requires FERC to issue rules that specify detailed data fields and standardized formats for transmission and interconnection reporting, mandate quarterly interconnection queue submissions, and ensure filings are fully searchable and machine-readable. It orders a review and, if needed, re-filing of recent FERC Form No.1s and directs FERC and the EIA to create a centralized public data repository and APIs.
Who It Affects
Transmitting utilities, Transmission Organizations (including RTOs/ISOs), interconnection customers/developers, FERC staff, the Energy Information Administration, the Department of Energy, National Laboratories, and third-party analysts will be directly engaged by new reporting, data tooling, and analytics requirements.
Why It Matters
Standardized, machine-readable transmission data and a centralized repository fill long-standing gaps that obscure interconnection delays, hidden upgrade costs, and capital structure effects on rates. For professionals, this will change how regulators audit costs, how developers assess queue risk, and how utilities document investment decisions.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The core mandate is a FERC rulemaking to modernize how transmission owners and Transmission Organizations report information under the Federal Power Act. The bill lists specific data categories to be collected at the project and system level: project milestones and classifications, full cost histories (projected and actual), maintenance and O&M on a rolling basis, allocated cost shares, cost-benefit analyses, and whether projects followed competitive solicitations.
It goes beyond simple project descriptions by asking for capital-structure details (authorized returns, incentive adders, weighted average returns) and for identification of potential double-leveraging where holding-company structures are involved.
Interconnection transparency is prominent. FERC must require transmitters and Transmission Organizations to file interconnection queue data at least quarterly, including the models used in studies.
The bill demands disaggregated accounting of interconnection-related costs—study fees, milestones/reservations, local interconnection facilities, network upgrade costs, and system-wide estimates—so that analysts can track who pays what and when. It also requires reporting on congestion costs and deliverability shortfalls that impose costs on ratepayers or prevent least-cost dispatch.The statute sets firm formatting rules: reports must be machine-readable, searchable, and accessible through a single public web interface; forms must contain no blank cells unless an exemption is approved; projections must include assumptions and methodologies; and FERC is directed to provide templates or tools to ease compliance.
The bill provides an exemption process for sensitive or exceptional cases, requiring a written justification that FERC may grant.To operationalize the data, the bill obliges FERC, working with the EIA, to build and maintain a centralized data repository ingesting historical and future FERC Form No.1 filings and the new reports. The EIA is tasked with developing schemas, metadata, APIs, and user tools, so data can be downloaded in bulk or queried by utility, year, region, or category.
Separately, DOE — through National Laboratories — must develop and host an Interconnection Data Dashboard that presents anonymized queue metrics, timelines, cost aggregates, visualizations, and supports exports for public analysis, accompanied by periodic research reports on cost drivers, scenario modeling, and efficiency opportunities.
The Five Things You Need to Know
FERC must review covered FERC Form No.1 filings from the five years before enactment and, within one year of its rule, require utilities to re-file any incomplete forms to meet the bill’s machine-readable and metadata standards.
Within two years of enactment, historical and future FERC Form No.1 filings must be publicly available through the centralized data repository the bill directs FERC and the EIA to create.
Reporting must include capital-structure and ratemaking details for each project or asset—allowed ROE, return on debt, authorized capital mix, weighted average return, and any incentive adders—plus information to assess double-leveraging under holding companies.
Transmitting utilities and Transmission Organizations must submit interconnection queue data and the interconnection study models at least quarterly, with disaggregated line items for study fees, reservation payments, local attachments, network upgrades, and system-level estimates.
DOE, via National Laboratories, must build an Interconnection Data Dashboard that provides anonymized queue analytics, regional comparisons, project timelines, aggregated upgrade costs, visualization tools, and API access, and publish annual dashboard findings.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
Every bill we cover gets an analysis of its key sections.
Short title
Designates the act as the 'Grid Research and Development Act.' This is purely nominal but sets framing for subsequent provisions tying data modernization to research and development goals.
FERC rulemaking: required reporting content
Directs the Commission to adopt rules that standardize what transmitting utilities and Transmission Organizations must file. The statute enumerates granular data fields: project lifecycle milestones and classifications; original and actual costs for new projects and renewals; maintenance and operations expenses on current-year and five-year rolling averages; cost allocations and competitive-solicitation results; congestion-related costs; technical losses; interconnection cost categories; system capacity, load and delivered energy; and deployment/location/hourly usage of advanced technologies. Practically, this turns narrative construction filings into structured, analyzable datasets that regulators and analysts can cross-compare across projects and regions.
Quarterly interconnection reporting
Requires quarterly submissions of interconnection queue information and the study models used for interconnection analysis. That forces near-real-time visibility into queue volumes, study phases, and modeling assumptions that previously were unevenly available across regions, enabling identification of delays, withdrawals, and systemic bottlenecks.
Format requirements and exemption process
Specifies machine-readable, fully searchable formats, a single public web interface for downloads, and templates to reduce administrative burden. Filings may not have blank cells unless an entity obtains a written exemption from FERC, which creates an administrative process for protecting legitimately sensitive information while keeping most data standardized and open.
FERC Form No.1 review and modernization
Directs a one-year review of 'covered' FERC Form No.1 filings (the five years preceding enactment) and authorizes FERC to require revised filings that comply with the new standards. This provision recognizes that much legacy data sits in inconsistent formats and requires utilities to refile where necessary so the centralized repository is complete.
Centralized data repository and EIA role
Directs FERC, with the EIA Administrator, to build a public, searchable repository that includes FERC Form Nos. 1, 1–F, 3–Q, 714, 715, and 730 and the new filings. The EIA must supply schemas, metadata, APIs, and user tools, ensure standardized identifiers and formats across transmitters, and incorporate visualization tools while aligning public access with CEII protections and anonymization practices.
DOE research, national labs dashboard, and reporting
Charges DOE (via National Laboratories) with conducting periodic research using anonymized queue data to analyze cost drivers, value to ratepayers, alternative interconnection solutions, and scenario modeling. DOE must also develop and maintain an Interconnection Data Dashboard with anonymized queue metrics, visualizations, filtering, and exportable datasets and publish annual dashboard-based reports assessing queue efficiency and ratepayer impacts.
Definitions
Defines key terms used across the bill (Administrator, Commission, FERC Form No.1, metadata, project, Secretary, and Federal Power Act terms such as 'transmitting utility' and 'Transmission Organization'), narrowing the statute’s coverage and tying it to existing FPA definitions.
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Explore Energy in Codify Search →Who Benefits and Who Bears the Cost
Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Federal and state regulators: gain standardized, auditable datasets and metadata to assess cost drivers, verify cost allocations, and evaluate incentives and capital structures across utilities, improving oversight and rate reviews.
- Developers and project planners: receive clearer interconnection queue visibility, anonymized timeline benchmarks, and access to standardized upgrade-cost data, which improves project risk assessment and financing decisions.
- Researchers, consultants, and market analysts: get machine-readable historical FERC Form No.1 data plus APIs and visualization tools, enabling more rigorous, reproducible analysis of transmission buildout scenarios and interconnection bottlenecks.
- Ratepayer advocates and consumer-facing entities: obtain data to quantify rate impacts from transmission and interconnection decisions, assess the value delivered to customers, and advocate for alternative, cost-effective solutions.
- EIA and DOE National Laboratories: obtain an expanded statutory role for providing schemas, tools, and dashboards that formalizes their data stewardship and analytics function in electricity policy.
Who Bears the Cost
- Transmitting utilities and Transmission Organizations (including RTOs/ISOs): must upgrade reporting systems, produce detailed disaggregated cost data, refile historical Form No.1s when required, and support APIs and new templates — requiring staff time, IT investment, and possible consultant support.
- Smaller utilities and non-major transmitters: face disproportionate compliance costs relative to resources, since the bill applies to all entities filing FERC Form No.1 and reporting under the FPA but does not differentiate by size in the core mandates.
- DOE, National Laboratories, and EIA: must allocate personnel and technical resources to build and maintain the dashboard, schema libraries, metadata, and public tools; absent appropriations, implementation could strain existing budgets.
- Market participants and developers: may face new commercial-disclosure risks as more granular project and cost data become public, necessitating internal reviews of what proprietary information is shared and potential competitive impacts.
- FERC staff and inspectors: will need to develop new review processes and technical capacity to evaluate machine-readable filings, assess exemptions, and audit metadata quality — an administrative burden that requires training and likely system upgrades.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is that standardization and public disclosure are essential to diagnose and reduce ratepayer costs and interconnection inefficiencies, but the same push for granular, machine-readable data increases administrative burdens, risks exposing sensitive or commercially valuable information, and requires substantial agency and utility resources—so the law must balance rigorous transparency against practical implementation and security limits.
The bill aggressively prioritizes transparency and standardized data, but implementation will hinge on technical detail and resources. Converting decades of heterogeneous Form No.1 filings into standardized, schema-driven datasets is nontrivial: utilities use different accounting practices, regional planning conventions vary, and mapping legacy fields into unified metadata risks loss of context.
The exemption process offers a safety valve for genuinely sensitive items, but it puts FERC in the difficult position of adjudicating many contested confidentiality claims while avoiding excessive redaction that defeats comparability.
Another tension is granularity versus security and commercial sensitivity. The statute requires disaggregated interconnection cost accounts and capital-structure details that are useful for oversight but can expose competitive or critical-infrastructure information.
The bill mandates anonymization and CEII alignment, but effective anonymization that preserves analytical value is technically challenging. Finally, the statute assumes agencies have or will receive the funding and technical staff to build APIs, dashboards, and visualization tools; without explicit appropriations, timelines (one and two year deliverables) could slip or produce partially implemented systems that frustrate stakeholders and create inconsistent interim practices.
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