MANY MINDEDGrid short on new supply as data centers pull more power
FERC Chairman Laura Swett says the latest capacity auction run by PJM, the largest US grid operator, serving 67 million people across the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, cleared nearly 7 GW below its reliability target while drawing only about 500 MW of genuinely new supply. In an abundant-power system, new generation keeps pace with demand; this auction barely added any.
The regulator is treating it as a structural problem. FERC set a July 23 technical conference on PJM's governance, with Swett calling its stakeholder process too slow and opaque. It also ordered the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to write reliability standards and registration rules for computational loads such as data centers and crypto-mining by December 31, and to file a plan for next steps by March 1. Separately, it told California's grid operator and the Southwest Power Pool to report by September 30 on managing market seams across the West.
The pressure behind all this is demand from AI data centers rising faster than supply can answer. A capacity market that clears below its reliability target with almost no new generation points toward tighter margins and higher costs for the households and businesses on the system, the opposite of power getting cheaper and more plentiful. The scramble to write rules for computational loads is an attempt to get ahead of that curve.
Swett was careful to say FERC is not singling out PJM, calling the shortfall a complex problem that needs federal, state, market, and utility parties to act together. The July 23 conference and the year-end NERC deadlines are the next things to watch.
Source: Utility Dive