PJM officials participated in the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities Technical Conference on Resource Adequacy on Aug. 5, joining state and industry experts on how best to handle the unprecedented growth in electricity demand that is challenging both the reliability and affordability of the electrical system.
Conference panels across the day highlighted burgeoning electricity demand; several participants cited PJM’s projection that 30 GW of the 32 GW of new load forecasted by 2030 would be from data centers.
Speaking on the panel “Maintaining Resource Adequacy Long-Term,” PJM’s Stu Bresler, Executive Vice President – Market Services and Strategy, said that figuring out how to understand and serve these “large loads” was the most important challenge confronting grid operators and states, a sentiment that speakers shared throughout the day.
Bresler agreed with other speakers who emphasized the importance of PJM’s Effective Load Carrying Capability method of accrediting classes of generation types for their contribution to reliability. PJM is supporting ongoing refinements to ELCC, including figuring out how generators’ investments to improve the reliability of their resources – such as winterization of equipment to better operate in extreme cold – can be valued in the market.
“How do we give resources credit for investment as they make it, in anticipation they will perform better than they have historically?” he said.
In addition, he said PJM and stakeholders would continue their efforts to investigate and develop a sub-annual product in the capacity market to recognize that some resources perform better at different times of the year.
Over the longer term, Bresler said, PJM and its stakeholders may explore maintaining the three-year forward nature of the auction, and whether the entities that provide electricity supply to customers, known as load-serving entities, should be required to have some form of hedging mechanism in place so that retail rates are not subject to year-to-year volatility in capacity prices.
Getting Forecasting Right
With demand growing so rapidly, panelists discussed how best to forecast the pace of that growth. PJM’s Andrew Gledhill, Manager – Resource Adequacy Planning, discussed how PJM forecasting is evolving to capture rapid load growth after decades of very small or zero annual increases.
“A couple of years ago, we only had two to three [transmission] zones talking to us about data centers,” Gledhill said. “In the 2025 forecast, we had 10 zones talking to us.”
PJM is working with local utilities to provide as much insight as possible on how they evaluate data center development in their individual load forecasts so that PJM can provide better accuracy and transparency in its long-term load forecasts for its footprint, which includes all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia. These efforts include identifying criteria to be included in the load forecast and how to think about uncertainty over the next five to 10 years.
Speakers on the “Planning for Future Load Growth” panel with Gledhill said one thing was certain in forecasting – that any forecast is bound to be wrong, by a little or a lot.
At the same time, they expressed confidence in PJM’s efforts to get it right. Margarita Patria, principal of Charles River Associates and an expert on market design, described PJM’s forecasts as “very well-vetted.” Tim Gallagher, CEO of ReliabilityFirst, one of six regional organizations responsible for grid reliability for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), said he agreed that PJM’s demand forecasts are “directionally sound.”
Panelists also discussed how some states and utilities in PJM have been taking action to create greater financial accountability for data centers, which in turn will help to refine PJM’s load forecast data it obtains from the utilities.
Finding Solutions
Demand response was mentioned repeatedly as conference participants considered more timely responses to pressing supply issues, given long lead times required for generation development.
“Load flexibility is going to be more important” as generation supply grows more constrained Gledhill said.
To illustrate the tight demand supply balance in PJM, Gledhill noted that PJM called on demand response resources twice during Winter Storm Elliott in 2022 and has already activated demand response on five days this summer.
“Demand response has become increasingly valuable,” he said.
Other panelists discussed how data centers could come on to the system earlier if they agreed to decrease their energy use in times of system stress or switched to backup generation, whether it be oil or batteries. Others suggested that the only solution was for data centers to bring their own generation if they wanted to connect sooner.
Clearing the Interconnection Queue
During the panel on “Identifying the Proper Resource Mix,” industry professionals praised PJM’s recent work on reforming its process for connecting new resources and processing approximately 140 GW in resources over the last two years.
“PJM has been quite good about getting projects out of the queue,” said Evan Vaughan, Executive Director of MAREC Action, representing wind developers, solar developers, wind turbine and solar panel manufacturers, and energy storage developers. Approximately 46 GW in projects – enough to power 40 million homes at full output – have cleared PJM’s process and are free to build.
“PJM has done very good work in breaking up that logjam,” said Richard Levitan, President and Principal of Levitan & Associates, a Boston-based management consulting firm specializing in the energy industry. PJM expects to clear its backlog of interconnection requests over the next 18 months and begin its Cycle 1 process for new generation projects in Spring 2026.