If you live anywhere in the corridor running from Chicago to Washington, D.C., the number on your next electricity bill may have very little to do with how often you ran the air conditioner. This week, wholesale power prices across PJM Interconnection — the grid operator that keeps the lights on for 67 million people across 13 states and the District of Columbia — shot past $2,500 per megawatt-hour, more than 60 times the roughly $40 price tag PJM carries on an ordinary day. Coverage of the spike has mostly stopped at the scary headline number. Here's what it actually means for your household bill, and what doesn't get talked about nearly enough.
