PJM Interconnection, the organization responsible for managing the electric power grid for 13 states, including West Virginia, must move swiftly to add capacity, says the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Chair Laura Swett stated that the “stakeholder process” is “slow when it should be fast . . . and vulnerable to vetoes and agenda control exactly when the region needs immediate action.” While not singling out PJM, Swett stated that the problems faced this month serve as a wake up call across the United States.
Alarm bells among industry and federal officials went off when PJM “cleared nearly 7 GW below its reliability target and only drew 500 MW of new power supply,” reported the trades publication Utility Dive.
FERC Commissioner Lindsay See expressed that “PJM has to be able to get reforms across the finish line in a timely and transparent way.”
PJM Interconnection’s primary responsibilities lay in maintaining grid reliability and also cost-effectiveness for customers. Its region runs from Pennsylvania in the north to parts of North Carolina in the south, and from the Atlantic to the Mississippi River near Chicago.
West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrissey’s pledge to add 50 GW (a single GW powers approximately 750,000 homes) of power generation by 2050, as well as added transmission lines to move the power to markets, would provide significant assistance in enhancing grid reliability. Failure to provide more power generation and reliable distribution could lead to rate hikes and/or power shortfalls at peak times.
This week on July 23, FERC will hold a special meeting to investigate the problems behind why PJM has not been able to see expanded generation or improved transmission logistics in a timely manner. Questions they will examine include those related to transparency reforms, reforms to the stakeholder process that “could ensure PJM can meet the region’s challenges”, “improve speed in decision-making while preserving stakeholder input”, and a number of other issues.
FERC’s goal lies in discussing “PJM Interconnection’s (PJM) governance and stakeholder process, with a particular focus on identifying and evaluating concrete, actionable reforms to improve PJM’s ability to address operational and market needs in a timely and efficient manner.”
It could also suggest reforms to PJM’s “governance and stakeholder process.”
In other related news from the same FERC meeting, the agency directed the North American Electric Reliability Corporation “to file by December 31, 2026 one or more new reliability standards to address reliability risks in the Bulk Power system.”
The resulting “Large Loads Action Plan” will address the impact of computational loads of data centers and crypto-mining operations with an eye toward ensuring that expansion of these facilities do not threaten function of the power grid.
