PJM Interconnection plans to address electricity shortages amid data center demand

The biggest power grid in the United States just admitted it doesn’t have enough electricity to go around. PJM Interconnection, which manages the electric grid serving roughly 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C., is racing to overhaul its infrastructure as AI-hungry data centers devour power at a pace nobody planned for. The grid’s first-ever capacity shortfall PJM’s capacity auction, the mechanism that ensures there’s enough power generation lined up to meet future demand, failed to secure sufficient supply for the June 2027 through May 2028 delivery period. That’s the first time in the grid operator’s history that this has happened. PJM projects that data centers alone will add over 30 gigawatts of additional peak electricity demand by 2030. To put that in perspective, 30 GW is roughly the output of 30 nuclear power plants running at full capacity. Prices jumped from $28.92 per megawatt-day in the 2024/25 period to $329.17 per megawatt-day for 2026/27. That’s more than a tenfold increase, driven largely by the insatiable appetite of data center operators clustering in regions like Northern Virginia. Emergency measures and billions in new infrastructure The US ...