Backstop

Where the book uses it

• Chapter 6 — Firm, Around-the-Clock

  Where the electricity comes from: grid queues, transformers, turbines and the firm power a datacenter needs every hour of the year, on calendars the buildout does not control.

• Chapter 10 — The Lender’s Decision

  Who is lending the money and who bears the loss: the bonds, leases and guarantees behind the largest campuses, and how the paper reaches ordinary retirement accounts.

Where the record uses it

• Person Friar, Sarah

Sources that use it

• PJM Interconnection, “FERC Accepts PJM Reliability Backstop Proposal: Order Delays One-Time Procurement to Commit New Electricity Supply,” Inside Lines, 30 September 2026 (PJM’s own account: “PJM will not proceed with the Reliability Backstop Procurement on Sept. 30 as originally planned”; “All timeline milestones previously communicated for the RBP will be reviewed and communicated to stakeholders at a later date”). In the Sources
• Broadcom Inc., Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended 2 August 2026, filed 10 September 2026, accession 0001730168-26-000080 (purchase commitments of $126.8 billion, $126,821 million in the commitments table, the supplier-level split not disclosed; remaining performance obligations of approximately $179.2 billion; “These commitments include obligations under a long-term contract for custom AI accelerators entered in the fiscal quarter ended May 3, 2026”; the Convertible Notes paragraph, naming no customer: “our customer may, under certain circumstances and if needed, issue to us convertible promissory notes up to an aggregate principal amount of $42 billion”, to be used “solely for the customer’s obligations under the lease agreements”, and as of 2 August 2026 “no notes have been issued to us”; the filing’s HTML sets the figure as “$ 42 billion” in separate spans; the Financial Guarantee paragraph, naming no partner: “our Backstop liability will be equal to any difference between 85% of the outstanding amounts owed on the lease Backstop and the value of the AI racks received upon sale of the assets at that time”, the remedies including “reselling the AI racks back to the seller at a fixed price under certain conditions”, and “No amounts have been paid under the Backstop.”; among the risk factors: “During the three fiscal quarters ended August 2, 2026, approximately 95% of the wafers manufactured by our CMs were produced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited” and “We believe our wafer requirements represent a meaningful portion of TSMC’s total production capacity.”). In the Sources
• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, “Order Accepting Reliability Backstop Procurement and Establishing Further Procedures,” PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., 196 FERC ¶ 61,245, Docket Nos. ER26-3380-000 and EL26-108-000, 29 September 2026 (“we accept the proposed RBP for filing, suspend it for five months, effective February 28, 2027”, subject to refund, with “cost allocation, Transmission Owner exit rules, and LSE collateral requirements” sent to a paper hearing and a section 206 proceeding opened; the rest of the proposal found just and reasonable). In the Sources
• PJM Board of Managers, “Board Decisional Letter on Critical Issue Fast Path - Reliability Backstop Procurement and Connect and Manage,” letter to stakeholders from its chair, Paula Conboy, 27 July 2026 (the Board’s decision on the reliability backstop; “Because PJM does not have jurisdiction to allocate retail costs directly to individual data centers, state action will be essential.”; the members’ proposal “received greater than two-thirds sector-weighted member support”; the Board’s reason for setting that proposal aside, that it “concluded that a voluntary subscription framework would not provide sufficient assurance that capacity equal to the identified near-term shortfall would actually be procured”). In the Sources
• PJM Interconnection, L.L.C., “Reliability Backstop Procurement to Address Resource Adequacy and Large Loads,” section 205 filing, FERC Docket ER26-3380-000, 31 July 2026 (requested effective date 29 September 2026; PJM to open the procurement window on 30 September 2026 if the framework is accepted by 29 September; commitments for fixed terms of up to fifteen years, from the 2028/2029 to the 2042/2043 delivery year; MW-weighted average levelized procurement cost capped at $555 per MW-day UCAP; on who pays, at page 99: “if no allocation is reported by the relevant Electric Distributors with allocated RBP UCAP MW, PJM will allocate RBP Charges based on the Peak Load Contribution submitted to PJM for the LSEs in the relevant zone/area”, and “PJM is not proposing a backup methodology for how RBP Charges should be allocated to non-jurisdictional, retail customers”; of the stakeholders’ advisory votes of 30 June 2026: “Of the 13 proposals, only the voluntary RBP framework proposed by the Joint Electric Distribution Companies and Data Center Coalition” “received greater than two-thirds sector-weighted member support”, and the Board “concluded that a voluntary subscription framework would not provide sufficient assurance that capacity equal to the identified near-term shortfall would actually be procured”; on its origin, at page 2: the backstop is “one part of a multi-pronged implementation of the Statement of Principles Regarding PJM issued on January 16, 2026”, by the National Energy Dominance Council and the 13 governors of the PJM states, which urged an auction “commencing no later than September 2026” and to “[p]rovide 15-year price certainty for new capacity resources”); Federal Register notice of the filing, 6 August 2026, at the second address, the filing itself at the first. In the Sources

And 8 more: search the Sources.

Related terms

• Beignet
• Offtake
• 10-K, 10-Q
• Basis point
• Batch Zero
• Behind the meter
• Bridge loan
• Bridge power
• Capacity auction
• Combined-cycle
• Convertible
• Coupon