PJM Interconnection

26Jan

Thank Heaven for Coal and Sound Energy Policy

The Wall Street Journal hit the nail on the head this weekend in an editorial titled “Thank Heaven for Coal Power in the Cold.” Winter storm Fern has wreaked havoc across a 2,000-mile stretch of the country leaving hundreds of thousands without power. If not for coal generation, it would be millions more. Electricity grids […]
21Jan

The Affordability Crisis Is a Reliability Crisis

Soaring electricity prices have become a top-tier political issue and will remain so through midterms and likely far longer.  That was underscored last week when the Trump administration hosted several state governors from PJM Interconnection territory, the nation’s largest electricity market, to urge the grid operator to hold an emergency capacity auction for data center […]
17Dec

Answering the Grid Reliability Call

Winter’s bite has arrived. Much of the country is already facing a polar blast and regional electricity grids are ramping up generation to meet high demand. Electricity prices in some regions are already soaring. But not everywhere. Notably, there’s a sharp divide emerging on affordability between the grids that have access to coal generation and […]
12Nov

Another Winter Living on the Edge

The November wind has arrived with winter nipping at its heels. Here in Washington, the mercury dropped below freezing for the first time this fall as snow began to blanket Midwestern states. Right on cue, the North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) previewed its annual Winter Reliability Assessment. NERC warns region-wide cold snaps – much […]
17Sep

Can West Virginia Come to the Rescue?

“We must become the indispensable battery of the nation,” West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey said last week when he announced a plan to expand the state’s generating capacity to 50 gigawatts (GW) by 2050 from roughly 15 GW today. Morrisey’s plan, called “50 by 50,” envisions not just an effort to maintain West Virginia’s existing […]
13Aug

Planned Coal Plant Retirements Crash into Energy Reality

Utilities are grappling with an unshakeable reality: they can’t meet soaring power demand without the existing coal capacity they have. One after another, utilities are dropping plans to close plants or are kicking retirements far down the road. Deliberately removing dispatchable capacity from grids at the same time they are facing record breaking—and growing—electricity demands, […]
30Jul

“It is actually here now”

“The reliability threat is not on the future horizon,” Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman (FERC) Mark Christie said last week. “It is actually here now.” Christie, who was overseeing his last FERC meeting before departing the commission, was responding to results from PJM’s recent capacity auction—an auction that for the first time came up short […]
25Jun

Will the Power Keep Flowing?

What a week for congressional attention on grid reliability. A brutal heatwave is pushing the supply of power to its very limit in grids stretching across much of the country. Outages have already hit parts of New York City, while the PJM Interconnection and Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) grids have both issued “maximum generation […]
11Jun

Aligning Energy and Regulatory Policy with the AI Moment

It has become hard to overstate the impact AI and data centers are having on the power sector. This is an industrial revolution on an extraordinary scale. At a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) conference on grid reliability last week, regulators and grid operators once again sounded the alarm over the challenges they collectively face […]
04Jun

Racing to Cover Capacity Shortfalls

Need more evidence we’re in a power supply emergency? Look no further than how the nation’s grid operators are scrambling to fast-track interconnection of new dispatchable resources that can shore up eroding reliability. From the Great Plains to New York, operators are frantically trying to revise interconnection processes to get new generation added to grids […]