Setting a National Standard: How Exelon is Protecting Customers and Powering Growth
Industry
As the demand for electricity continues to go higher – driven by data centers, AI workloads, and other large-scale projects – utilities face a critical challenge: connecting massive new loads while protecting everyday customers from shifting costs.
Exelon is meeting that challenge head-on with its Transmission Security Agreement (TSA), a framework that can serve as a national model for responsible growth.
What is a TSA?
The TSA ensures that only serious, fully planned projects move forward. That’s because it can require firm commitments and financial guarantees from large-load customers. Speculative requests and so-called phantom load growth will be discouraged by large-load customers. It could also mean that timelines for legitimate projects accelerate. Every TSA includes a defined ramp-up schedule and can require some larger customers to support their own infrastructure, which can signal readiness and reduce risk.
Most importantly, the TSA can serve to keep cost responsibilities with the project rather than with everyday customers. As an example, if a large commercial business decides to reduce its load or exit a project early, shortfall and termination charges could apply, and those funds are credited back to our customers.
This protects against stranded costs and ensures that speculative projects don’t burden households or local businesses. For projects like data centers, which could request 50 megawatts (MW) or more, enough to power up to 50,000 households, the TSA provides transparency and accountability.
TSA: A National Model to Protect Customers
Committed revenue contributions and strong credit support mean that larger, high-demand customers pay their fair share, while companies like Exelon maintain reliability for all. By requiring regulatory review and financial guarantees, the TSA creates a repeatable, transparent framework that aligns incentives and accelerates timelines without compromising fairness.
The model puts customers and communities first because it addresses one of the biggest challenges in today’s energy landscape: managing rapid load growth responsibly.
The TSA discourages unrealistic and even phantom demands, all while protecting existing customers and setting clear expectations for large-load projects. It’s a structure designed to be replicated across the industry – and one that can truly balance innovative technology with crucial equity measures.
At Exelon, we’re driven by a focus on customer affordability, operational efficiency and reliability across everything we do. That’s why the TSA is another tool helping us to power the future while protecting the present.