High natural gas prices, driven by increased heating demand, pushed wholesale electricity costs up 116% compared to winter 2024.

Shifting fuel mix sees solar, storage, and hybrid or thermal projects dominate interconnection queue, surpassing wind.

FERC Chairman Mark Christie emphasized the unsustainable pace of dispatchable generation retirements and the need for additional capacity.

Data centers in the Western Interconnection are dominating the grid connection queues, accounting for nearly 80% of total requests from large load customers.

Larger capacity reserves and over 11 GW of battery storage resources are putting the California grid manager on stronger footing as it faces a warmer-than-normal summer.

The new rules come as PJM found that more than 20% of loss of load risk occurs in hours outside of the current demand resource availability windows.

The grid operator’s latest load forecast projects 3.4% lower peak winter demand this year than previously forecasted, with the difference increasing to 5.5% by 2030.