PowerHouse Hillwood Holding LLC v. Commonwealth Edison Co. (FERC Blocks ComEd's Bid to Cancel $20B Joliet Data Center's Power Agreement)

Zoning & Land Use Pending
Date
November 2, 2026
Added to tracker
November 3, 2026
Court or forum
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois
State
Illinois
Property type
Data Center
Amount / scale
$20 billion data center campus; disputed $1 letter of credit
Parties
Plaintiff: PowerHouse Hillwood Holding LLCDefendant: Commonwealth Edison Company

FERC rejected ComEd's attempt to cancel the transmission agreement behind Hillwood's $20B Joliet data center over a disputed $1 credit filing, leaving the underlying contract fight to a federal judge in Chicago.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on September 22, 2026 rejected Commonwealth Edison Company's notice seeking to cancel the transmission security agreement behind PowerHouse Hillwood Holding LLC's roughly $20 billion, 1.8-gigawatt Joliet Technology Center data center campus, after PowerHouse Hillwood satisfied the agreement's initial credit support term with a $1 letter of credit that ComEd argued was inadequate. FERC declined to rule on the underlying contract dispute itself, leaving it to litigation already pending in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Why it matters

The fight shows that a credit-support or security-deposit clause in a utility interconnection or transmission agreement -- often treated as secondary to headline capacity and pricing terms -- can itself become the mechanism by which a utility tries to unwind a multibillion-dollar data center project's power supply. CRE lenders, equity partners, and developers financing hyperscale data center campuses should treat ambiguous credit-support timing language in transmission agreements as a first-order diligence item, not boilerplate.

Original source ↗

Part of the Data Center Litigation Tracker: every related matter in one table.

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A regulatory dispute over a single dollar has become one of the more closely watched commercial real estate fights tied to the AI data center boom. On September 22, 2026, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected an attempt by Commonwealth Edison Company, the Chicago-area utility subsidiary of Exelon Corporation, to cancel the transmission security agreement underpinning a roughly $20 billion, 1.8-gigawatt data center campus that developer PowerHouse Hillwood Holding LLC is building on nearly 795 acres in Joliet, Illinois. FERC's order keeps the agreement alive for now, but it declined to resolve the contract dispute that triggered ComEd's cancellation notice in the first place, leaving that fight to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, where litigation between the two sides is already underway.

Case timeline · 3 entries Latest: November 2, 2026 — Federal judge denies Hillwood's bid to reinstate a related retail electricity agreement, citing Illinois Commerce Commission jurisdiction

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