PJM Interconnection’s membership split Tuesday on how to manage data centers’ growing strain on the country’s largest electricity grid, rejecting proposals from the transmission organization’s staff and backing a plan pushed by the hyperscalers’ industry group.
The eruption of energy-hungry data centers — which are especially concentrated across PJM’s territory of 13 Eastern and Midwestern states — has sent capacity prices soaring and led to the first-ever shortfall in PJM’s electricity procurement, with a 50-to-60-gigawatt deficit projected over the next decade.
Under intense political pressure to curb electricity prices while maintaining grid reliability, PJM has developed a pair of linked strategies that could reshape the data center build-out.
The first is a one-time electricity procurement auction this autumn to cover a forecast capacity shortfall, known as the Reliability Backstop Procurement.
