PJM Grid Folks Acknowledge Solar and Wind Will Never Be Enough and Natural Gas Plants Are Essential

Guest post by Jim Willis of Marcellus Drilling News.

The country’s largest electric grid, PJM Interconnection, which covers all or parts of 13 states, including PA, OH, and WV, has made changes to how it decides which new power plants can connect to the system. The new policy *favors* adding natural gas-fired power over other types of power like unreliable solar and wind. The change comes in response to the rapidly increasing demand for more electricity from data centers and artificial intelligence computing. PJM’s gas-favoring policy change has rankled the environmental left.

In October, the CEO of PJM ratcheted up his rhetoric about his concerns that PJM is heading for outages if new sources of power don’t come online quickly (see PJM CEO Says Lack of New Power for Grid Threatens “Our Way of Life”). At the Organization of PJM States, Inc. (OPSI) meeting, the PJM CEO said, “I feel more concerned today than I did two years ago about resource adequacy. Load is growing much faster than we had projected then, which even back then was an eye-popping set of numbers.” He also said, “We need capacity – a lot of capacity.”

PJM has figured out how to add that “lot of capacity”—by favoring and encouraging new gas-fired power plants in the PJM footprint to connect.

The urgency to build more electricity generation is driven by the high demand for power from data centers located in areas like northern Virginia from companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Meta.

PJM plans to bring its Reliability Resource Initiative (RRI) to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to allow new gas generators to connect to the grid ahead of renewable energy projects. The plan aims to address the need for more power resources amid expected retirements of older coal- and gas-fired plants.

The new policy doesn’t sit well with unreliable renewable energy developers and climate hoaxers who blather on about “climate change.” Let them blather.

As the condensed article below points out, challenges remain in adding new gas pipelines and ensuring reliable gas production to meet the growing electricity demand from data centers. Investment in new generation and transmission infrastructure will be crucial to prevent future blackouts and brownouts as power demands continue to rise due to factors like data center expansion. Now is the time to act before it’s too late.

The power needs of data centers run by America’s technology giants will open the door to new natural gas-fired generation under a strategy advanced by the largest U.S. grid operator, pushing aside carbon-free wind and solar projects.

PJM Interconnection, which manages the high-voltage grid serving 65 million people in the mid-Atlantic and Ohio River Valley, has approved changes to how it decides which new power plants can connect to the system. PJM officials say the new policy is driven by an urgent need to build more electricity generation to power data centers fueling tech industry growth.

PJM has warned that doing nothing to increase generation could leave the grid dangerously short by the end of the decade.

Cloud computing giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta, among others, are vying for access to long-term and stable power. Inside the PJM footprint, much of the activity is clustered in northern Virginia, where artificial intelligence technology is pushing energy demand to new levels.

PJM expects to bring its Reliability Resource Initiative (RRI) to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission this month. The plan would allow a new round-the-clock gas generator to “jump the queue,” moving in front of some renewable energy projects that have been waiting for years for permission to connect to the PJM grid.

“Priority would be given to those resources that have a greater chance of contributing to reliability,” PJM said.

PJM reported in October that it has enough resources to meet forecast demand for electricity this winter “under expected conditions,” but severe weather could trigger emergency procedures.

“The PJM system is reliable today, but we are keenly aware of the challenges we face as system reserves continue to erode,” PJM CEO Manu Asthana said. “The trends we are seeing raise system risk under the kind of extreme weather we have seen over the past few years.”

PJM said it now has nearly 180 gigawatts of generation to meet an expected peak winter demand of 141 GW.

That’s today. But PJM officials say the grid’s safe operating margins will shrink steadily over the balance of the decade because of increasing power demand and expected retirements of older coal- and gas-fired plants. Two years ago, PJM said about 40 GW of fossil fuel plants were at risk of retirement by 2030. PJM’s independent market monitor, Monitoring Analytics, estimated the figure is nearly 60 GW.

The new power sources PJM hopes to add through the RRI process would be needed by 2029. PJM said it plans to make decisions on new plant approvals by the fourth quarter of 2026…

While high and low estimates of data center growth vary widely, the time required to plan, approve and build new power plants or transmission lines leaves little room for error, particularly if the high scenarios happen.

“Billions of dollars of new investment in generation and transmission capacity will be needed to restore a healthy reserve margin and to recover that portion of reserve capacity that has been consumed by data centers,” said economists Ike Brannon and Sam Wolf in a report for the Kemp Foundation in October.

The number of data centers planned or under construction in northern Virginia will raise power demand from data centers in the region to 7 GW in 2030, a doubling in just seven years, the authors said.

“One way or another the grid needs new investments to avoid future blackouts and brownouts,” said the economists…

The PJM plan, as it was presented by the grid operator, would allow up to 50 new generation projects to enter a cluster of previously proposed power facilities. The current projects have been waiting more than three years for PJM’s approval, said Invenergy, the Chicago-based renewable power and transmission developer, in comments to PJM…

An expectation that new electricity demand from data centers will be met by burning more natural gas is gaining converts on Wall Street. In late November, Appalachian gas company EQT announced a $3.5 billion investment by Blackstone Credit and Insurance…

EQT’s properties include the Mountain Valley pipeline that delivers gas to southern Virginia, where data center developer Balico is planning to power a campus of supercomputers with gas turbines.

But, the PJM strategy built around new gas plants will require building new gas pipelines through eastern U.S. states, often against stiff opposition from residents. “There is no additional pipeline capacity to be able to increase production” from the Appalachian gas fields, said David Braziel, CEO of Houston-based RBN Energy

#PJM #Grid #ElecticGrid #Electricity #NaturalGas #AI #DataCenters

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