The Department of Energy (DOE) has ordered PJM Interconnection and Constellation Energy to keep 760 MW of generation at Pennsylvania’s Eddystone Generating Station available to operate through Nov. 20, extending an emergency measure as the grid faces rising electricity demand and a wave of generator retirements..
The DOE’s reliability analysis includes roughly 25 GW of projected PJM load growth, including 15 GW from data centers, against about 17 GW of announced fossil-fuel retirements.. The Aug. 21 order, issued under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, requires PJM to economically dispatch Eddystone Units 3 and 4 when needed.
It also says the units “shall not be considered a capacity resource.”. The two units are 380 MW each and can run on natural gas or oil. They were scheduled to retire May 31, 2025, but DOE has repeatedly directed that they remain available..
“The core problem is timing: load is arriving faster than replacement generation, and transmission can become executable,” said Neil Osnato, founder of Persistence Analytics Group.. Related:Flex Pays $4.4B for EPC Power as AI Data Centers Push 800V Architecture. Data Center Growth Meets Retiring Generation.
DOE’s modeling estimated around 430 loss-of-load hours in average weather, rising to 1,052 hours under worst-case conditions with maximum unserved load of approximately 21.3 GW. While these are stress scenarios rather than forecasts, they illustrate why DOE considers the combination of load growth and retirements a reliability concern..
Darryl Lawrence, Pennsylvania’s consumer advocate and head of the state’s Office of Consumer Advocate, said PJM’s reliability position has changed significantly after decades of maintaining ample reserve margins.. “During extreme weather conditions, PJM’s system is fragile,” Lawrence said.
“And this is not something that we’ve seen in my time in the business, which is 20-plus years.”. The department’s order points to a “timing mismatch between resource retirements, load growth and the pace of new generation entry.” New generation and transmission can take years to develop, while data center projects can add hundreds of megawatts of demand in individual locations..
Lawrence said the recent influx of large data centers has changed the assumptions PJM has relied on for decades.. “We haven’t seen this kind of forecasted demand in the PJM system since the days when they were building steel mills,” Lawrence said.. Multiple Extensions.
The Aug. 21 order is the sixth DOE directive extending or preserving Eddystone’s availability since its scheduled 2025 retirement.. Lawrence said the repeated emergency interventions suggest PJM’s mechanisms, which worked well for decades, are struggling to keep pace with unprecedented forecasted demand not seen since the steel mill..
Related:SLB’s $4.1B Kelvion Deal Expands AI Data Center Push. A PJM spokesperson told Data Center Knowledge that the grid operator supports DOE action to defer generator retirements in its footprint, citing the growing risk of a supply-demand imbalance as generation retires while demand rises..
PJM forecasts 32 GW of load growth by 2030, with 30 GW of that growth expected to come from Large Loads, primarily data centers. The grid operator also broke its all-time peak load on July 2, reaching an estimated 168,158 MW, according to preliminary data.. Elizabeth Whitney, managing principal at Meguire Whitney, said the repeated use of Section 202(c) reflects a broader shift in how the federal government approaches energy emergencies..
The authority has historically functioned as a short-term reliability tool, Whitney said. But the Trump administration’s declaration of a national energy emergency has created a broader framework for repeated use of the authority.. “If there is a statutory benefit to being in an emergency situation, then there’s going to be political pressure to find an emergency to justify that use,” Whitney told Data Center Knowledge in a phone interview..
Related:Solid-State Transformers Power Next-Gen AI Data Centers. That does not necessarily mean the orders are unjustified, she said. But repeated reliance on emergency authority raises the question of how long an emergency measure can remain in effect before it effectively becomes part of normal resource planning..
Who Pays for the Emergency?. The DOE order requires PJM to use economic dispatch to minimize costs to ratepayers, but it does not settle the larger question of who ultimately pays to keep retiring generation available.. Whitney said those costs generally flow through the market, meaning they can ultimately affect electricity customers.
She said that raises a broader question about whether large loads that drive the need for additional reliability resources should bear more of those costs.. A spokesperson for Constellation told Data Center Knowledge that it has reached an agreement with PJM to recover the costs of complying with the DOE order, including operating and required maintenance costs.
PJM is allocating those costs using the same approach it uses for capacity costs, according to Constellation.. Lawrence said Pennsylvania’s large-load tariff uses a ‘but for’ test: if infrastructure wouldn’t be built without a specific customer, that customer should bear the cost..
Applying that principle to Eddystone is more difficult. Electricity cannot be traced to a specific generating unit or data center, making it difficult to establish a direct relationship between a large load and the cost of preserving a retiring plant.. PJM’s recent large-load reforms could change the conditions under which future data centers connect to the grid, but they do not solve the immediate problem of generation already scheduled to retire..
“Eddystone addresses the supply side of an existing timing gap,” Osnato said. “PJM’s large-load reforms address the demand-entry side of the future gap.”. The two issues are connected, but they operate on different timelines..
How Much Data Center Load Will Arrive?. The uncertainty around future data center demand complicates the reliability picture.. The 15 GW of data-center load in DOE’s model accounts for 60% of the total 25 GW of projected PJM load growth.
But that demand is less certain in timing and scale than a generating plant that has already announced its retirement.. “A generator retirement is relatively binary. A 15 GW data-center forecast is not,” Osnato said..
Lawrence raised another problem with large-load forecasting: the same data center project can appear in multiple utility forecasts while developers negotiate for service.. A developer could discuss a project with PECO and then approach PPL, for example, potentially causing both utilities to include the prospective load in their forecasts even though the project ultimately would connect to only one system..
“We potentially have a double-counting problem,” Lawrence said.. Whitney said power constraints could also change the projections as developers adjust their plans to secure electricity.. “I don’t know that we can really reliably trust any modeling right now that is even three to five years out,” Whitney said..
That uncertainty does not mean projected demand can be ignored. But it raises the question of how much confidence grid planners should place in long-term, high-load forecasts when those forecasts influence decisions about retiring existing generation.. “If forecast large-load growth is consequential enough to justify preventing physical generation from retiring, then the durability of that demand assumption becomes part of the reliability question itself,” Osnato said..
DOE’s order does not attribute the need to preserve Eddystone to data centers alone. Its analysis reflects the combined effects of load growth, generator retirements and the pace at which new resources can enter service.. Whitney said the issue ultimately extends beyond Eddystone and PJM’s immediate reliability needs.
Congress has yet to establish a broader framework for the scale of the AI infrastructure buildout and its demands on energy and other resources.. “The benefit side of the equation has not changed to keep pace with the tax on resources that these larger data centers are proposing,” Whitney said..
She expects pressure for data center legislation to increase as lawmakers return from August recess, but said Congress faces limited time to develop a comprehensive response before the end of the year.. For now, Eddystone remains available.. “That’s why I see 202(c) as emergency reliability insurance,” Osnato said.
“It is a bridge, not a design.”. (CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Eddystone as a “coal plant.” The units are powered by oil or natural gas).
