Campaign for a Better Grid Archives | Citizens Utility Board

CUB Q&A: PJM’s Critical Issue Fast Path (CIFP) Policy Proposal on Data Centers

Elizabeth — Thu, 13 Nov 2025 16:12:51 +0000

What’s happening? On Wednesday, November 19, PJM members will vote on how to integrate data centers into the grid. As we’ve detailed elsewhere, data centers require massive amounts of electricity and drive up consumer costs. Some, but not all, proposals would ensure that data centers only connect to the electric system if we maintain reliability and affordability. Who is voting? PJM has 5 different types of members, Generation Owners, Transmission Owners, Electric Distributors, Other Suppliers, and End Use Customers (big industrial users of electricity and consumer advocates, like CUB). If you’re noticing how much power big monied interests have, and how little consumers have, you’re not wrong. Do state lawmakers have a vote? No. Does anyone represent the public interest? Only the 14 voting consumer advocate offices. Big tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Meta are not yet PJM members. How does the vote work? What are they voting on? There are 20 proposals! They all fall on a spectrum of doing next-to-nothing to protect reliability and affordability, to actually making data centers take responsibility for themselves. PJM Members can vote “yes” on multiple proposals. The vote is advisory, which means the PJM Board does not have to follow its results. However, proposals getting a significant amount of votes will certainly attract the PJM Board’s attention. What are the issues important to consumers? CUB is evaluating proposals based on the following criteria: -Require data centers to bring their own new generation or demand response for consistent service. Stealing existing generation doesn’t count. -…if data centers don’t bring their own generation or demand response, then they are required to act flexibly or be interruptible (can turn them off as needed). Data centers must never cause blackouts for the rest of us. -Improve the load forecast to make sure that PJM doesn’t double-count speculative data centers. -Overall, prevent data center capacity, energy, and transmission costs from falling on consumers. Which proposals meet CUB’s criteria? CUB has joined in with consumer advocates from Maryland and Pennsylvania on a proposal, called the Joint Consumer Advocates proposal. The proposal protects consumers from high capacity costs, limits energy costs, improves load forecasting, extends the price cap for two years, and starts a new stakeholder process to prevent data centers from increasing our transmission costs. The proposal was carefully developed with consumers at the forefront. Other proposals that meet CUB’s criteria include proposals by the Independent Market Monitor, the Legislative Collaborative/NRDC, and Silverman/Glatz. What are the stakes? Rolling blackouts and spiking bills. If nothing is done, we are looking at an average monthly increase of $70 on our monthly electric bills by 2028. By 2033, it could be $163 billion across all of PJM. That’s unacceptable. Read our other WatchBlog articles about reining in data center costs: How data centers are raising our bills in Illinois–and what we should do about it Data center distress: CUB, NRDC experts warn PJM states could get hit with forced blackouts, $163B in electricity capacity costs

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CUB Statement on Consumer Victory: FERC Rejects PJM’s Anti-Consumer Transmission Proposal

Jim Chilsen — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 18:52:27 +0000

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has rejected an anti-consumer proposal by PJM Interconnection and a group of transmission owners that would have given transmission owners more control over power grid planning. CUB is grateful to Earthjustice, who acted as our legal counsel, and our partners in this case: Delaware Division of the Public Advocate, Office of the People’s Counsel for the District of Columbia, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and Sustainable FERC Project. The following is a statement from Clara Summers, manager of CUB’s Consumers for a Better Grid campaign: We commend the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) for rejecting this anti-consumer proposal by PJM and the Transmission Owners, which would have given large corporations with a profit motive far too much power and secrecy in transmission planning. PJM’s Consolidated Transmission Owners Agreement (CTOA) would have threatened efficient, thoughtful regional transmission planning and further shielded the process from scrutiny. It would have served to enrich transmission owners much more than the public interest. We’re glad FERC saw through PJM and the Transmission Owners’ power grab. (PDF version of this statement.) Background: On Friday, Dec. 6, FERC rejected a plan proposed by power grid operator PJM Interconnection to give transmission owners more control over PJM’s transmission planning process. Back in June, PJM asked FERC to approve the deal, which it had secretly negotiated with transmission owners. It was called the Consolidated Transmission Owners Agreement, or CTOA. PJM is the nation’s largest power grid operator–managing the flow of electricity over northern Illinois and all or parts of a dozen other states. Transmission owners are wealthy and powerful energy companies–like Exelon, the parent of utility ComEd–that own the big, high voltage lines that crisscross the nation. CUB opposed the CTOA because… It would have allowed transmission owners to override more efficient regional projects, and instead build many smaller “supplemental” projects that are more lucrative for transmission companies and expensive to consumers. It included extra giveaways to the transmission owners to shield them and PJM from scrutiny and make it extra hard to challenge them. It would have undermined FERC Order 1920, an order that calls for thoughtful transmission planning. On July 22, CUB filed a protest at FERC against the CTOA. The consumer group received legal representation from Earthjustice, and were joined by the Delaware Division of the Public Advocate, Office of the People’s Counsel for the District of Columbia, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and the Sustainable FERC Project.

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Consumers for a Better Grid: 2024 Year In Review

Jim Chilsen — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 16:39:53 +0000

Well, we’ve made it to the end of 2024. As we take a breath to gather ourselves for the coming year, it’s good to reflect on all we’ve accomplished in the past year and chart a course for all that remains to be done. CUB, through its Consumers for a Better Grid campaign, has been working diligently on behalf of Illinois consumers at the power-grid operator PJM Interconnection and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). A few highlights from the past year … January: We started the year by organizing consumer advocates across the two Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) that manage the power grids in Illinois, MISO and PJM, to call for better interregional transmission planning. We have a special interest in ensuring that planning between the two regions is done efficiently, because proactively planning interregional transmission can lower costs and improve reliability in Illinois (especially in the face of extreme weather). Learn more about transmission: Who pays for transmission lines? Take a look at your power bill February: State legislators in Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia announced a shared effort to bring better transparency to PJM. CUB’s Clara Summers testified in front of the Maryland state legislature in support of the bill. March: The Chicago Tribune shined a light on PJM’s broken interconnection queue process. “(PJM) has unnecessarily set our transition to cleaner energy back by years,” said Clara Summers, the Consumers for a Better Grid campaign manager at CUB. April: CUB’s Clara Summers was invited to speak on a panel at the National Environmental Justice Conference and Training Program. The decisions made at RTOs impact the affordability, reliability, and cleanliness of our electricity. Environmental justice communities feel these issues most acutely, as they often deal with energy burden, frequent power outages and power plant pollution. But getting access to RTOs is very difficult for the public. Consumers for a Better Grid is working to change that. May: CUB Executive Director Sarah Moskowitz and Campaign Manager Clara Summers attended PJM’s Annual Meeting in Baltimore. At the meeting, Clara presented to the PJM Board about needed improvements to the decision-making process. We also joined other consumer advocates in filing formal comments to FERC, agreeing with proposed rules barring generators from forcing consumers to pay for reliability standards the generators are required to meet. June: CUB joined environmental organizations in filing a protest with FERC, asking that the federal agency require PJM to comply with Order 2023 by streamlining the interconnection process and modernizing the grid. “PJM is dragging its feet on the clean energy transition and doing everything it can, instead, to create exceptions for itself,” we told the Chicago Tribune. July: This was a banner month for us. In the space of a few weeks, we joined a protest filed with FERC advocating for fair treatment of energy efficiency in the market. We also filed a protest opposing anti-consumer changes to PJM’s Consolidated Transmission Owners Agreement, with legal support from Earthjustice. Finally, a proposal that we co-sponsored with Maryland advocates passed a PJM stakeholder vote with resounding support. (The vote begins a discussion on how to design and […]

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PJM’s gas track: what gives?

Jim Chilsen — Fri, 08 Nov 2024 19:16:17 +0000

By Clara Summers, Campaign Manager Consumers for a Better Grid (a project of CUB) The nation’s largest power grid operator says it’s “fuel neutral” when considering energy resources, so why does PJM Interconnection appear to be showing so much love for dirty gas at the expense of wind and solar projects? As we’ve detailed elsewhere, PJM has gotten us into a mess. High capacity prices, which the grid operator calls a success, will hit consumers in June. Yet we won’t see any benefit, as we won’t be able to get new generation online for years because of the interconnection queue backlog. All of these issues were foreseeable and preventable, and there are some basic fixes that PJM could pursue to help clean up this mess. The most basic (and we can’t believe we have to say this), is for PJM to comply with FERC Order 2023. This is a federal rule to improve and speed the process of connecting to the grid. That Order came out last year, but PJM is still asking for exceptions to the rule, so it can continue taking longer than every other grid operator to get new generation online. So while PJM has been talking out of one side of its mouth saying that it’s concerned about not getting new resources online, out of the other side it is arguing for special treatment to slow-walk interconnection. What gives? Instead of complying with Order 2023, PJM has unveiled a special, “one-time” fast-track interconnection process, called the Reliability Resource Initiative, that bypasses the existing interconnection queue. PJM’s proposal would let new resources cut in line and be considered along with projects that have already been waiting—for years—for PJM to get around to studying their connection to the grid. Make no mistake: The RRI proposal is more about picking and choosing resource types than it is about getting new resources online quickly. The grid operator has recently made multiple public statements favoring gas: “lt has become very clear that our region will require the buildout of a significant quantity of new generation, including a material amount of natural gas…” PJM said in a recent letter responding to consumer advocates concerned about the price spike. There are many, many megawatts of mostly wind and solar generation waiting to connect in PJM. Other grid regions, like SPP and MISO (see map), manage much larger amounts of wind and solar and are now reaping the reliability benefits. But PJM has balked at the clean energy transition, citing concern at the “operating characteristics” of such resources. This behavior is extremely confusing, given that PJM’s own analysis has said that it could manage a grid that was over 90% carbon-free. In some versions of the RRI proposal, PJM has explicitly (and inappropriately) excluded wind and solar. Bringing more resources online will help bring prices down. The best way to do that would be to fully implement Order 2023 and fix the remaining problems with the interconnection process as a whole. If PJM pursues something like the RRI, it needs to adhere to the following key principles: Principle 1: Show us your work PJM […]

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PJM broke the capacity auction–but here’s how they can fix it

Elizabeth — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 22:28:26 +0000

By Clara Summers, Campaign Manager Consumers for a Better Grid (a project of CUB) The electricity price for Illinois’ largest power utility, Commonwealth Edison, will go up significantly next summer because of a recent auction to secure reserve power. Grid operator PJM announced that its recent “capacity” auction sent prices skyrocketing from $28.92 per Megawatt-day to a record $269.92 per MW-day. Such capacity costs make up a portion of the price of electricity, so this is expected to cause ComEd bills to increase starting in June of 2025. Why are the prices so high? The Market Monitor for PJM said “the [] prices do not solely reflect supply and demand fundamentals but also reflect, in significant part, PJM decisions about the definition of supply and demand[.]” But if supply and demand weren’t to blame, what was? Well, it’s complicated: There are multiple root causes–and each demonstrates a different failure of PJM leadership. But just as the causes are in PJM’s hands, so are the solutions… Root Cause 1: A Perfect Storm of Interconnection and Auction Delays PJM’s capacity market is supposed to operate under a “three-year forward” mechanism. That means PJM holds auctions to buy reserve electricity three years in advance of when it’s needed. So when lower supply sparks higher auction prices, generators will then have ample time (three years) to respond to that signal and build new power plants. Unfortunately, 2018 was the last time PJM held a three-year forward auction. Today, auctions happen on a drastically compressed schedule. For example, PJM’s July auction secured reserve power for just 11 months into the future, June 2025–not enough time for new generating resources to build and connect to the grid. That would be true even if PJM were quick to get resources online–but it’s not, and that’s the other problem. PJM is infamous for having one of the nation’s slowest interconnection queues. The “queue” is the waitlist for new electric resources seeking review and approval by PJM so they can be connected to the grid. Unfortunately, there are more renewable resources waiting in line than all of the resources currently powering PJM’s vast 13-state region. As it processes this massive backlog, PJM isn’t renewing any new interconnection applications until 2026, at the earliest. Some projects have sat in the queue for so long (5 or more years) that they have lost financing or site permissions, and so they drop out of the process before PJM even reviews them. In this frustrating situation–with a key part of the clean energy transition on hold–everyday electric customers will pay for higher capacity prices on their electric bills without getting any benefit for those payments. High prices + failure to get resources online quickly = bad news for ratepayers. What does PJM need to do? Get back on schedule and bring more generation online. First, PJM should fully comply with FERC Order 2023, which laid out new standards for interconnection processing. PJM has been foot-dragging on compliance, asking for exceptions to a number of these standards, including realistic treatment of battery storage, a technology that could be a huge help in easing these […]

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