The mechanism: On June 18, 2026, FERC issued tailored show cause orders under Section 206 of the Federal Power Act to all six regional grid operators (PJM, MISO, SPP, ERCOT's federal touchpoints, CAISO, ISO-NE), demanding they justify or rewrite the rules governing how "large loads" — generally 20+ megawatts, the exact size class of hyperscale data center campuses — get connected to the transmission system. The docket, RM26-4-000, grew out of a Department of Energy-directed ANOPR and requires RTOs to file grid-adequacy reports within 30 days and respond to the show-cause orders within 60. This is not a vague policy tailwind. It is a specific administrative process that determines the queue speed at which a data center developer can go from signed power purchase agreement to energized campus — and every gigawatt of load that gets a faster interconnection timeline becomes a nearly immediate order for the electrical equipment that sits between the substation and the racks.
That equipment is switchgear, medium-voltage distribution, and busway — Eaton's core business. Utilities and developers do not order this gear speculatively; they order it once interconnection studies clear and a energization date is real. FERC compressing that timeline nationally is the single biggest lever on how fast Eaton's backlog converts to revenue.