Who Gets the Power Plant

For the year starting in 2024, the price was under thirty dollars per megawatt per day. In the next auction, it jumped to nearly two hundred and seventy. Since then, it has sat at the ceiling regulators approved: about three hundred and thirty. And in the last two auctions, the grid still couldn't buy enough to meet its own reliability requirement. The first time in its history.

PJM's capacity price from its own auction reports, in dollars per megawatt-day: $28.92 for 2024/25 (that auction was finalised in February 2023); $269.92 for 2025/26; then the FERC-approved cap: $329.17, $333.44, $325 (a 2.5% fall). The last two auctions fell 6,517 and 6,831 MW short of the reliability requirement, the first RTO-wide shortfalls in PJM's history; the 2026/27 auction cleared 139 MW above it. The capacity total is not the cost to households: PJM says so.

Its independent market monitor puts it plainly. Of this year's sixteen billion dollars in capacity charges, it estimates six point three billion "was a result of data center load". Over its last four auctions: nearly half. Its proposal: make data centres "pay for their own capacity".

Monitoring Analytics, 28 July 2026, on the 2028/29 auction held in July: "of the $16.4B in capacity market charges, $6.3B was a result of data center load. This was 38.2 percent"; "$29.4B, or 46.2 percent of total capacity market charges over those four auctions". Estimates, said so; PJM disputes the cost reading: "The total value does not equate to the total cost to load". New generation that cleared: 2,669 MW UCAP in 2026/27; 524.7 MW in 2028/29.

In Texas, the requests to connect add up to more than five times the state's record demand. About ninety percent are data centres. In August, the governor ordered an audit of every one "before any additional data centers are approved to move forward."

ERCOT's figures (June 2026 data): about 474 GW of large-load requests, much of it speculative, so 'requests', never 'demand'; "~90%" data centres. ERCOT paused its Batch Zero study; its audit report's target date is 10 December 2026, as reported. Also on the record: FERC's show-cause orders of 18 June 2026 ('Preventing cost shifting'); Virginia's GS-5 class for customers of 25 MW and up from 1 January 2027, with minimum payments of 85% and 60%.

On the bill: so far this year, the average American household pays almost seven percent more for each unit of electricity than last year. In several of the grid's states, more: Ohio, Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, up twelve to thirteen percent. The government's statisticians don't name data centres as the cause. They point to weather, gas prices, grid upgrades and, in some regions, the capacity auctions.

EIA's Table 5.6.B, January to August 2026 against the same months of 2025: the United States 18.19 against 17.03 cents per kWh, +6.8%; Pennsylvania +12.0%, Maryland +12.6%, Ohio +13.0%, Virginia +13.0% (our arithmetic from EIA's two columns; West Virginia +1.4%). A rate, not a bill: EIA's figure is cents per kWh. EIA's outlook: PJM wholesale prices +41% in 2026, 'the largest increase across all regions', 'strongly influenced by natural gas prices and weather'. PJM's own estimate of the retail effect per auction, 1.5% to 5%, as reported (NJBIZ).

Microsoft says it will cover its own: "We'll pay our way to ensure our datacenters don't increase your electricity prices." And the tech companies are signing for whole power plants. Three Mile Island's reactor is being restarted, with its power sold to Microsoft for twenty years. Amazon has signed for a nuclear plant's power through 2042.

The power plants are being spoken for. The question is who pays for the rest.

'Spoken for' means the long-term contracts above. What we couldn't confirm: The Texas audit's target date. Talen and Amazon's front-of-the-meter move. Restart dates are targets.