{"id":65393,"date":"2025-12-19T16:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/65393\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T16:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T16:59:08","slug":"pa-n-j-del-power-outage-risk-rises-amid-grid-troubles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/65393\/","title":{"rendered":"Pa., N.J. & Del. power outage risk rises amid grid troubles"},"content":{"rendered":"

This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk<\/a>, bringing you news and solutions for our changing region.\n<\/p>\n

From the Poconos to the Jersey Shore to the mouth of the Delaware Bay, what do you want to know about climate change? What would you like us to cover? Get in touch<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

The mid-Atlantic region\u2019s grid operator is struggling to secure enough electricity to meet the demand projected from data centers in the coming years, as costs for consumers continue to rise.\n<\/p>\n

PJM Interconnection, which runs the grid in Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and part or all of 10 other states, released results of its latest capacity auction Wednesday. Auction prices reached a record high for the third auction in a row, but remained close to the last auction\u2019s prices, thanks to a price cap<\/a> of around $333 per megawatt-day negotiated by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro <\/a>to mitigate skyrocketing costs for consumers.\n <\/p>\n

For the first time across the entire grid region, PJM was unable to secure enough promised power to reach its goal, risking blackouts should electricity use outpace supply.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a little bit scary,\u201d said Abe Silverman, an energy consultant and research scholar at Johns Hopkins University.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a long-term structural deficit where the amount of power \u2014 generation supplies, power plants \u2014 is way less than the amount of electricity we\u2019re trying to provide to customers, and that is particularly driven by the data centers,\u201d he added.\n<\/p>\n

The organization uses capacity auctions to secure commitments from power producers and large power users to generate or conserve enough electricity to meet demand on the hottest and coldest days in the future, when people use more electricity. This month\u2019s auction determines capacity for the year starting in June 2027.\n<\/p>\n

Although PJM sought a 20% buffer, power commitments totaling just 14.8% over projected peak demand cleared the auction.\n<\/p>\n

PJM\u2019s projection of peak electricity demand for the year starting June 2027 was 5,250 megawatts higher than its projection for the prior year. Nearly all of this increase is attributable to data centers, PJM said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThis auction leaves no doubt that data centers\u2019 demand for electricity continues to far outstrip new supply, and the solution will require concerted action involving PJM, its stakeholders, state and federal partners, and the data center industry itself,\u201d said Stu Bresler, PJM\u2019s executive vice president for market services and strategy, in a statement.\n<\/p>\n

An independent PJM market watchdog, Monitoring Analytics, said rising power demand due to data centers<\/a> was the \u201cprimary reason\u201d capacity prices spiked during last year\u2019s auction, too.\n<\/p>\n

A worsening risk of blackouts in the mid-Atlantic region<\/p>\n

PJM\u2019s shortfall in guaranteed electricity generation for the year starting June 2027 is roughly equivalent to the electricity used by a city the size of Philadelphia, Silverman said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a significant miss,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

Silverman said PJM aims to secure enough power so that this sort of partial grid failure happens no more than once every ten years. With PJM unable to reach this reliability threshold during the most recent capacity auction, the region will be at an \u201celevated risk\u201d for blackouts starting June 2027, he said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an immediate reliability concern, but it\u2019s not in a reliability crisis,\u201d Silverman said.\n<\/p>\n

The projected demand from data centers, however, may not pan out, said Seth Blumsack, a professor of energy policy and economics at Penn State University.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThey could run into delays, they could get canceled \u2014 all sorts of stuff could happen,\u201d Blumsack said.\n<\/p>\n

PJM could also request that energy users voluntarily curtail their use or mandate usage reductions, said Hannah Wiseman, a professor of energy law at Penn State University.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cA failure to meet the reserve margin doesn\u2019t mean there will definitely be a blackout,\u201d Wiseman said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This story is part of the WHYY News Climate Desk, bringing you news and solutions for our changing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65394,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[69,71,70,5205,5206],"class_list":["post-65393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-pjm-interconnection","tag-whyy-news-climate-desk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}