The Docket | Cascading Effects

The Planning Gap

Adequate for a Summer That No Longer Exists

By Seth D. Carrington— June 2, 2026

Feature image for article: Adequate for a Summer That No Longer Exists

On May 18, the grid operator serving 65 million people across thirteen states needed a federal emergency order to avoid rolling blackouts. Temperatures hit the nineties in mid-May while 40,400 megawatts of generation sat offline for scheduled maintenance. Scheduled correctly, according to a calendar that no longer describes the weather. The next day, the national reliability authority declared the same grid adequate for summer. Both findings were accurate. They measured different things, against different assumptions about what "normal" looks like. The distance between those two numbers is where people get hurt.

The Planning Gap

Adequate for a Summer That No Longer Exists

By Seth D. Carrington— June 2, 2026

On May 18, the grid operator serving 65 million people across thirteen states needed a federal emergency order to avoid rolling blackouts. Temperatures hit the nineties in mid-May while 40,400 megawatts of generation sat offline for scheduled maintenance. Scheduled correctly, according to a calendar that no longer describes the weather. The next day, the national reliability authority declared the same grid adequate for summer. Both findings were accurate. They measured different things, against different assumptions about what "normal" looks like. The distance between those two numbers is where people get hurt.

The Blocked Fix

Where Is the New Generation? Behind a Five-Year Queue and a Transformer That Hasn't Been Built

Roughly 2,600 gigawatts of generation capacity sit in the interconnection queue. That is more than double what the entire US grid produces today. The median project waits nearly five years to connect. Close to 80 percent withdraw before they get there.

Projects that survive the queue hit a physical wall. Transformer demand is up 116 percent since 2019, with lead times stretching to four years and prices running four to six times their 2022 levels. Eighty percent of power transformer supply is imported. Nearly $2 billion has been committed to new North American factory capacity. None of it comes online before 2028.

The Blocked Fix

Where Is the New Generation? Behind a Five-Year Queue and a Transformer That Hasn't Been Built

Roughly 2,600 gigawatts of generation capacity sit in the interconnection queue. That is more than double what the entire US grid produces today. The median project waits nearly five years to connect. Close to 80 percent withdraw before they get there.

Projects that survive the queue hit a physical wall. Transformer demand is up 116 percent since 2019, with lead times stretching to four years and prices running four to six times their 2022 levels. Eighty percent of power transformer supply is imported. Nearly $2 billion has been committed to new North American factory capacity. None of it comes online before 2028.

TAKE NOTE

Withdrawal trap: Interconnection costs for projects that ultimately drop out average $599 per kilowatt in PJM, nearly 2.5 times the cost for projects that complete

Ratepayer cost: Building just 10 percent of queued renewables in time for PJM's 2026-2027 capacity auction would have saved ratepayers $3.5 billion

Steel bottleneck: Transformer cores require grain-oriented electrical steel produced at exactly two US plants, both owned by Cleveland-Cliffs

Tariff compounding: New tariffs including 50 percent on copper take effect in August, raising costs for imported and domestically built transformers alike

Capacity crunch: PJM's latest auction hit the federal price cap with a 6,623 MW shortfall while 46,000 MW of approved projects sit unbuilt

Summer Risk Map

Grid reliability assessments answer a specific question: can the system handle a normal summer? Climate change is making normal summers rarer. That gap between what gets planned for and what actually shows up is where this summer's risk concentrates.

Five signals worth watching as heat season opens. Several look reassuring at the headline level. Underneath, the picture is harder to read: margins tightening, seasons shifting faster than maintenance schedules can follow, federal emergency powers quietly becoming a regular operational tool. What connects them is a planning architecture still calibrated to historical weather. The weather has moved on.

Summer Risk Map

Grid reliability assessments answer a specific question: can the system handle a normal summer? Climate change is making normal summers rarer. That gap between what gets planned for and what actually shows up is where this summer's risk concentrates.

Five signals worth watching as heat season opens. Several look reassuring at the headline level. Underneath, the picture is harder to read: margins tightening, seasons shifting faster than maintenance schedules can follow, federal emergency powers quietly becoming a regular operational tool. What connects them is a planning architecture still calibrated to historical weather. The weather has moved on.

Emergency Order

DOE Ordered Data Centers Off to Prevent Blackouts

On May 18, DOE authorized PJM to curtail data centers and large loads with backup generation across 13 states. The trigger: over 40 GW offline for routine spring maintenance while projected demand hit 135,961 MW. The order lasted three days. Nobody called it routine. It was.

Risk Assessment

Fewer Flagged Regions, but Read the Fine Print

NERC's summer assessment flagged three elevated-risk regions (New England, Saskatchewan, Pacific Northwest), down from six last year. Better headline. But NERC's John Moura added the caveat that matters: "Improved conditions shouldn't be interpreted as saying overall reliability risk is declining."

Seasonal Shift

Spring Heat Now Collides With Spring Maintenance

NERC identifies the collision of early-season heat with scheduled maintenance outages as a growing reliability threat. May 18 proved the point: nineties arrived while 40-plus GW sat in pieces for planned work. The old assumption that June is prep time and July brings risk has quietly expired.

Grid Margin

New York's Summer Buffer Has Nearly Vanished

NYISO reported a 417 MW reliability margin for summer 2026, down nearly 80% since 2022. Under a three-day 95°F heat wave, that margin flips to a projected 1,679 MW deficit. Generator retirements in NYC and Long Island are outrunning new capacity additions.

Climate Pattern

El Niño Odds Keep Climbing Through Late Spring

NOAA's El Niño probability jumped from 61% in March to 82% for the May–July window, with a two-in-three chance it reaches "strong or very strong." Widespread extreme heat under those conditions would test grid margins already at their thinnest. Forecasts are still moving.

Further Reading

PJM Gets Emergency Approval to Curtail Data Centers, Large Loads During Hot WeatherThe primary trade account of the May emergency order, with exact reserve margin figures, the curtailment hierarchy PJM proposed, and the legal authority DOE invoked. Essential read...

The Power Grid Passed Its Report Card. But Read the Fine Print.NERC's 2026 Summer Reliability Assessment added 58 GW of new capacity and declared the grid adequate. This analysis walks through the three structural caveats buried beneath that h...

Quick links

DOE's Emergency Order Signals New Role for Data Centers' Backup Power

U.S. Transformer Market Faces Severe Supply Constraints as Lead Times Extend to Four Years

US Power Grid Faces Strain as Heat Wave Drives Up Demand and Repairs Lag

The Demand Accelerant

Grid planners spent a decade assuming flat demand. Then data centers arrived at a scale nobody's models anticipated, and the assumption broke.

A single industry now accounts for half of all new U.S. electricity demand growth. Wholesale prices have spiked hundreds of percent where facilities cluster. PJM, the grid operator serving 65 million people, says load growth is outrunning new generation. The federal government has twice invoked emergency powers to conscript private backup generators into public service. And the replacement power plants that might absorb the load? Stuck in a five-year interconnection queue, with four out of five projects dropping out before they ever deliver a watt.

Five numbers that trace what happens when explosive demand collides with infrastructure built for a world of stable consumption.

The Demand Accelerant

Grid planners spent a decade assuming flat demand. Then data centers arrived at a scale nobody's models anticipated, and the assumption broke.

A single industry now accounts for half of all new U.S. electricity demand growth. Wholesale prices have spiked hundreds of percent where facilities cluster. PJM, the grid operator serving 65 million people, says load growth is outrunning new generation. The federal government has twice invoked emergency powers to conscript private backup generators into public service. And the replacement power plants that might absorb the load? Stuck in a five-year interconnection queue, with four out of five projects dropping out before they ever deliver a watt.

Five numbers that trace what happens when explosive demand collides with infrastructure built for a world of stable consumption.

Demand Growth

One Industry Now Drives Half of New Demand

Data centers accounted for roughly 50% of all new U.S. electricity demand growth in 2025, per the IEA, and that share is projected to hold through 2030. American consumption is rising at more than twice the rate of the prior decade. No other country comes close.

Price Shock

Electricity Costs Up 267% Near Data Center Clusters

Bloomberg analyzed wholesale prices at 25,000 grid nodes and found costs rose as much as 267% over five years near major data center activity. That's the peak, not the average, concentrated in corridors like Northern Virginia. But local price shocks don't stay local for long.

Grid Warning

PJM Says Data Center Load Outpaces New Generation

PJM Senior VP Michael Bryson: the summer outlook "reflects a new reality — continued load growth driven by data centers that is outpacing the addition of new generation." Reserve margins are tightening. PJM can no longer reliably send surplus power to neighboring grids during emergencies.

Emergency Powers

DOE Can Now Commandeer Data Center Backup Generators