by Steve Haner

State elected leaders want more control over the regional electricity marketplace that manages the power grid in Virginia and 12 other neighboring states. They have a point in their complaints about PJM Interconnection Inc.’s problems but they are also deeply engaged in blame shifting for higher energy costs. 

Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) was one the several state governors who called Monday for major changes in the governance of the regional transmission grid operator, with an open threat that Virginia might leave entirely if demanded reforms were not adopted. The speech was covered by the Richmond Times-Dispatch, but with little focus on just want Youngkin and the others are asking for. Youngkin also said nothing about what would replace PJM, given Virginia is a major power importer.

Top on the governors’ joint list of reforms is an opportunity to choose, or at least nominate, two members for the 8-seat PJM governing board. What Youngkin and the newspaper didn’t mention is that one of the names they put forward is Mark Christie. Christie is the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and spent 17 years on the Virginia State Corporation Commission. He spoke right after Youngkin.

PJM, one of several regional transmission organizations around the country regulated by FERC, is currently governed by a board chosen by the multiple generation and transmission companies which are part of its network. Some of the most controversial energy decisions within its footprint, from eastern North Carolina to west of Chicago, are largely out of the control of state and local authorities.

Christie’s prepared remarks, which he shared with Bacon’s Rebellion, and we share with you in full (with some of the acronyms explained), get into that history. A key excerpt follows:

“Right now, PJM is an insiders’ game. Run by and for the interests who profit from what PJM does. 

 None of the tens of millions of consumers throughout PJM ever cast a vote to elect the managers of PJM, even though those PJM managers are going to make decisions that impact both the reliability and costs of power for those tens of millions of people in PJM.

So, if PJM is going to be a regional government for the grid across 13 states, then the elected leaders of those states – or their designees under state laws – must have a proper role in how this regional government for the grid makes decisions that affect their citizens.

Especially on issues as important as cost allocation for transmission projects planned to serve public policy goals, as FERC’s order 1920-B now requires.”

The “public policy” transmission projects he was talking about cross state lines or connect multiple utilities and can be needed for various reasons, from serving the massive data centers in another state to connecting a giant energy generation project such as Dominion’s wind farm to the rest of PJM. Another major PJM reform the states demand is more access for them to participate directly in the regulatory process as intervenors with standing.

The meeting Youngkin and Christie addressed Monday was in Philadelphia, because the spark plug behind this movement is Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D), who has sued PJM. Pennsylvania remains the one state with enough energy generation to export it regularly, giving Shapiro the biggest bat in challenging the status quo.

Pennsylvania’s electricity consumers have been more exposed than Virginians so far to the massive increases in future energy capacity price increases from PJM’s capacity auctions. But those costs are coming to Virginians, too, now. Blaming PJM has been a go-to political move in several states for a couple of years now, and its process for adding new energy projects to the grid can be agonizingly slow.

Youngkin joined in piling on Monday. 

“Instead of unlocking investment in fast tracking critical projects, PJM has instead been responsible for bottlenecks and delays that crush jobs, drive up utility bills and leave families and businesses hurting. This is a crisis of not having enough power, and it is a crisis in confidence…. We are where we are today because these forecasts were just fundamentally wrong — driven more by hope and ideology than reality,” Youngkin was quoted saying by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Youngkin was more accurate earlier in his 6-minute talk, when he said the supply versus demand crisis within the PJM states is “not new, and not something that crept up on us overnight.” 

Attentive Bacon’s Rebellion readers might remember this from 2023, and even this from 2017. Jim Bacon foresaw the challenge of data centers in 2017. With Christie still on the Virginia SCC, it rejected a 2018 Dominion Energy integrated resource plan because of inadequate information on future demand and whether wind and solar could meet it. PJM and Dominion Energy Virginia have warned for years that the politically driven trend to prematurely close reliable hydrocarbon plants and replace them only with wind or solar was not going to work.   

But the day after this Philly conference on the future of the grid, the Virginia SCC (now without Christie as a member) began a heated public hearing in Richmond on Dominion’s application to build a new natural gas generation plant in Chesterfield County. It would be a major reliability asset for all of PJM, not just Virginia, but the state’s Democratic political establishment is lined up to try to kill it.

No, blaming PJM for the fix we’re in is too easy. 

Politics not PJM pushed the various state-level decisions to close so many reliable hydrocarbon or nuclear plants long before they had worn out. Politics not PJM added $10-12 per month to Dominion residential electric bills for offshore wind, and another $5-8 for useless renewable energy certificates. Politics not PJM are resisting the development of new natural gas plants and continues to slow-roll nuclear. Politics not PJM dictate solar, wind and battery must dominate the list of new generation assets.

Some of the same politicians who got us in this fix now want more control over PJM itself, so this is a clear “be careful what you ask for” situation.