POWER reports that on 4 March 2026 seven hyperscalers—Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI—signed a White House-brokered voluntary Ratepayer Protection Pledge to fund new generation and all grid upgrades for their data centers without charging residential or commercial ratepayers. The article details PJM's FERC proposals and large-load tariffs, companies' bilateral cost-allocation deals, EPRI's projection that data centers could reach 9–17% of U.S. demand by 2030, and skepticism that the non-binding pledge carries enforcement or auditing.