*

Governors, Trump administration to sign two-year price cap

deal

for future PJM power auctions-sources

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PJM grid covers 67 million people in 13 mid-Atlantic and

inland

states

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Governors of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and Maryland

expected

to be among those attending-sources

By Jarrett Renshaw and Tim McLaughlin

WASHINGTON, Jan 15 (Reuters) - Governors from U.S.

states seeing a rapid expansion in data center construction will

visit the ‌White House on Friday to sign an agreement with the

Trump administration intended to curb rising electricity costs,

said two sources with direct knowledge ​of the matter.

The agreement includes price caps for two years on future

auctions in the PJM grid ‍covering 67 million people in

mid-Atlantic and inland states and forcing new data ⁠center

operators like Amazon ( AMZN ) and ⁠Google to take on a

greater share of the cost of expanding the grid.

The White House event comes as President Donald Trump ‌seeks

to combat consumer price inflation that risks undermining

support ​for Republicans ahead of November's mid-term elections.

The governors will be from among the 13 states within the

PJM grid, which is experiencing a rapid increase in data center

construction, ⁠according to the sources, who were not authorized

to ‍speak publicly ​about the matter.

The list includes Democrats Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and

Wes Moore of Maryland, along with Republicans Mike DeWine of

Ohio and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, the sources added.

Representatives from ‍the governors' offices and the White

House did not respond to requests for comment. A PJM

spokesperson said representatives from the grid operator did not

have plans to attend.

RISING POWER BILLS HAVE LED TO BACKLASH

Data centers are major consumers of electricity and are

being built due to rising demand for artificial intelligence.

Several guiding principles on how PJM should operate will be

unveiled at the event, including expediting the interconnection

of power ​plants ‍to ensure PJM has enough capacity to meet the

surging demand for power, according to the sources. It will also

call for triggering PJM's reliability backstop option to create

a separate auction ​for new generation, the sources added.

Rising power bills in PJM's region have led to a political

backlash over the last year and threats by some governors to

abandon the regional grid. Last summer, nine state governors

wrote an open letter to the PJM board of managers criticizing

the grid operator for not doing enough to address an escalating

electricity affordability crisis.

On Thursday, U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland

Democrat, introduced a bill called the "Power for the People

Act" to ​rein in rising electricity costs Americans are facing

from the huge amounts of energy required by data centers.

"Americans are already struggling to make ends meet - they

shouldn't have to foot the bill for big corporations' massive

expansion of data centers," Van Hollen said ‍in a press release.