PJM has Power Plant Fast Track Plan Approved

 Last week the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved a comprehensive reform of the PJM generator interconnection process.  The change is designed to quickly and more efficiently process new service requests by changing from a first-come, first-served queue process to a first-ready, first-served approach. This is how PJM is going to address the data center power demand problem.

PJM Interconnection, a regional transmission grid operator, works behind the scenes to ensure the reliability of the power grid and to keep the lights on. PJM is our regional transmission organization that takes responsibility for grid operations, reliability, and transmission service within 13 states and the District of Columbia: Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. As part of that mission PJM forecasts the demand and makes sure the power generation is available to meet that need. PJM is the largest regional grid operator.

Under the approved plan PJM can review up to 50 new power generation proposals in addition to the 55 gigawatts of renewable and batter energy storage in the already in the que. This change is needed to address the power shortage forecasted to be 30 gigawatts by 2029. Most of this growth is in Northern Virginia and is from the growth in the number of data centers. These new fast tracked generation proposals are thought likely to include large gas generation projects.  In its January 2025 Long-Term Load Forecast Report, PJM outlined near-term resource adequacy concerns, occurring as soon as the 2029/2030 delivery year.  Gas generation is not only dispatchable, but is generally the fastest to build and PJM will address the data center power demand surge.

Net Energy Load Growth in the PJM region is projected to average 4.8% per year over the next 10-year period, and 2.9% over the next 20-years. The total PJM electricity use is forecasted to be 1,328,045 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2035, a 10-year increase of 495,264 GWh, and reaches 1,482,068 GWh in 2045, a 20-year increase of 649,287 GWh. What is driving the growth is the demand in the Dominion Region-

from PJM

As you can see from the chart above in the Dominion Zone, Commercial Demand which includes data centers) for electricity had grown to over 50% of demand by 2023. Now that demand is forecast to continue growing driving almost all the near term growth in the entire PJM. It is reported that PJM's grid includes only 5% renewables at this time and this will slow the conversion to renewables under the VCEA. 

Under the VCEA, Virginia is legally required to retire all fossil fuel baseload generation, (this excludes the existing nuclear power plants), in favor of  renewable generation which is intermittent and not dispatchable. The VCEA will require additional solar panels enough to cover an area the size of multiple Fairfax Counties. Building so called solar farms has coincided with decreasing tree canopy in Virginia. This is counterproductive to a sustainable Virginia. With the retirement of baseload generation which is dispatchable and always on-demand and can power data centers in the dark, multiples of the GW generation shut down must be combined with utility scale storage to manage power demand when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. Such battery storage is not yet cost effective. The authors of the VCEA law forgot to control the demand for additional power when they planned for Virginia's future.