For the third auction in a row, the price of keeping the lights on across a 13-state swath of the country slammed straight into the ceiling.
On July 14, PJM Interconnection — the largest grid operator in the U.S., serving roughly 67 million people from Illinois to Virginia and Washington, D.C. — announced its capacity auction for 2028-29 cleared at $325 per megawatt-day, the maximum allowed under its price cap, even as supply fell about 6.8 gigawatts short of what the grid needs to stay reliable.
