PJM Capacity Prices Are Stuck at the Ceiling and What That Means for Your Bill

Oct 13, 2026 – Tom Williamson, MSI If you buy electricity anywhere in PJM’s territory, the capacity charge on your bill won’t go down anytime soon. Prices are locked in at or near record highs through May 2029. What happens after that is anyone’s guess, and that uncertainty matters if you’re signing a contract that runs into the 2030s. First, what is the capacity market? PJM runs the grid for 13 states and Washington, D.C. Every year or so,… Read More »

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Why PJM Power Prices Jumped in September, and What It Means for Your Business

Sep 30, 2026 By Tom Williamson, MSI Utilities If you watch wholesale electricity prices in the PJM region, the last few weeks have been anything but a quiet start to fall. Several short-term shocks hit a market that was already tight, and the effects are showing up in both spot and forward prices. Here’s what happened, and what we’re telling our clients. Summer heat arrived during maintenance season Every fall, power plants and transmission lines across PJM go offline… Read More »

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Massachusetts Protecting Commercial Energy Choice in H.5175

Massachusetts is facing a new bill that is designed to give residential power consumers protection from aggressive energy scammers. At the same time it hurts energy suppliers that serve the commercial and industrial sectors. One of our suppliers, Gridwealth, has a good article on this bill and what it means to all energy consumers in Massachusetts. Read about it here.

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digital infrastructure power consumption

Massive 10-Gigawatt AI Datacenter in Ohio

The rapid expansion of hyperscale data infrastructure in Ohio driven by a public–private partnership between American Electric Power and SoftBank Group is poised to fundamentally reshape the state’s electricity market. While the development of a 10-gigawatt data center complex represents economic growth and technological investment, it also introduces unprecedented pressure on the state’s already strained energy supply, with direct implications for electricity pricing. To understand the scale, consider that Ohio’s peak electricity demand was approximately 9.4 GW in 2023.… Read More »

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PJM Capacity Auction Set to Make Electricity Prices Rise for 2026

Electricity bills are set to increase once more following the latest PJM Capacity Auction for 2026, which showed a 22% jump in capacity charges. This adds to the steady rise in electricity costs across the 13 state PJM region—including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Washington DC, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—where rates have already nearly doubled since 2020. In July 2024, PJM held its Base Residual Auction (BRA) for the year 2025/2026, revealing a dramatic surge in capacity prices—9 to 10… Read More »

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The US is facing unprecedented load growth. Here’s how we ensure resource adequacy

Adding sufficient resources fast enough to reliably meet the growth will require an array of demand- and supply-side resources as well as stronger transmission interconnection planning. The U.S. electric system is under more pressure than ever before. In order to meet the challenges of unprecedented growth in electricity demand from data centers, re-shoring and other uses, the U.S. electricity grid will have to expand more than five times faster than in the previous two decades. All regions of the… Read More »

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US electricity demand will grow 50% by 2050, electrical manufacturer study finds

Data centers and transportation electrification will drive U.S. electricity demand about 2% higher each year for the next quarter century, according to a new analysis completed for NEMA. Driven by data centers and transportation electrification, U.S. electricity demand will increase 2% annually and 50% by 2050, the National Electrical Manufacturers Association said in a study published Monday. Improvements to energy efficiency will mute some potential demand gains, leaving the electrical manufacturing group’s projections “somewhere in the middle” compared with other recent studies, NEMA… Read More »

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State Renewable Energy Portfolio Standards and Goals

Introduction Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) require that a specified percentage of the electricity utilities sell comes from renewable resources. States have created these standards to diversify their energy resources, promote domestic energy production and encourage economic development. Renewable energy policies help drive the nation’s $269 billion market as of 2022, for wind, solar and other renewable energy sources. These policies can play an integral role in state efforts to diversify their energy mix, promote economic development and reduce emissions.… Read More »

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Why Electricity Prices Are Soaring in Blue States

Why Electricity Prices Are Soaring in Blue States Over the past two decades, the divergence in electricity rates among U.S. states has grown increasingly stark. While in 2004 the average residential electricity rate in the five most expensive states was only twice as high as in the five most affordable states, today it is 2.6 times higher. This widening gap reflects the growing differences in state approaches to energy production, regulation, and climate policy, which have created distinct regional… Read More »

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