Michael Ott

DTE Energy launched a competitive procurement process, opening a request for proposals to secure 1,000 GW of new solar and wind projects. The utility is seeking developers to build out utility-scale assets to support DTE Electric’s broader clean energy roadmap. https://lnkd.in/gGEeHWnw #SolarEnergy #WindEnergy #RenewableEnergy #EnergyTransition #PowerGrid

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PJM’s latest capacity auction results send a clear signal: the region urgently needs new energy resources to meet growing demand and keep costs in check. There are solutions.  It’s time for state leaders and PJM to act — by reopening the interconnection queue, clearing the interconnection backlog, investing in advanced transmission technologies, and unlocking demand-side resources like virtual power plants. Read our full statement here: https://lnkd.in/eYa6W4gJ

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As electricity demand continues to soar, what will it take to power the future? 🤔 In one of our latest episodes, Energy Superhero Michael Caravaggio dives deep into the numbers. Working as the Vice President of Energy Supply at EPRI, Mike shares data-driven truths about where we have been and where we’re going when it comes to energy and peak demand. ⚡️ Data centers training AI models need "five nines" (99.999%) reliability, something grids cannot deliver with renewables alone. Some hyperscalers are turning to behind-the-meter gas turbines, nuclear power, and innovative storage solutions to keep their servers humming. 💻 To learn more, check out the full episode at Energy.Media, Youtube, or Spotify. 🎤 #datacenters #AI #technology #innovation #electricity

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PJM Interconnection said operational improvements helped it maintain grid reliability during record winter demand in 2025, even as reserve margins tightened and peak loads increased across its footprint. During a January Arctic outbreak, PJM posted a new winter demand record of about 143,700 megawatts while continuing to export power to neighboring grids. The organization cited improved preparation, coordination with member companies and operational planning as key factors in managing the sustained period of extreme cold. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eff_Cpvg

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TXOGA’s latest Electricity Power Pulse shows that in Q4 2025 ERCOT sustained strong, broad-based load growth, higher baseline wholesale prices, and continued reliance on dispatchable natural gas generation to maintain reliability. Key takeaways: Load growth remains strong and structural. Total ERCOT electricity demand rose 6.1% year-over-year, continuing a trend of roughly 5% annual growth since 2020. Importantly, average load has increased faster than peak demand, showing sustained energy use rather than isolated peak-hour stress. Natural gas continues to anchor system reliability. Natural gas supplied roughly 40% of ERCOT generation in Q4 2025 and provided at least half of total generation in more than 90% of hours, underscoring the continued importance of dispatchable resources as wind and solar expand. Renewables continued to grow rapidly—but have not replaced dispatchable supply. Wind and solar output continued to rise, with solar generation up more than 30% year over year, yet dispatchable resources remained essential across most hours to balance the system. Wholesale prices shifted higher during normal operations. Average hub LMPs increased 28% y/y, with gains evident across the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles—indicating higher baseline prices driven by tighter system conditions, not extreme scarcity events. Price volatility moved away from extremes. While day-to-day price dispersion widened, extreme scarcity pricing declined, with no prices above $500/MWh in Q4 2025—pointing to a tighter but more stable market overall. Overall, the Q4 2025 results reinforce that ERCOT’s primary challenge is not peak scarcity, but operating a more complex system under sustained load growth—one that increasingly depends on reliable, dispatchable natural gas generation. Read now: https://lnkd.in/ga6-UGB8

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This afternoon, the PJM Interconnection's Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) zone entered EEA2, making public calls for conservation and curtailment due to “a power plant experiencing an unplanned disconnection from the BGE electric system”. With peak demand forecast significantly lower than the levels seen in late July’s heat wave, this event speaks to the fragility of a system under duress. Immediately following the morning disconnection, there was a small rise in local congestion, but it wasn’t until load ramped up into the afternoon that prices signaled the gap in power flows to meet local demand. At 08:46, an emergency outage was reported on the Brandon Shores 230kV network, and multiple lines on the Brandon Shores transmission system were placed on emergency outage. Following these outages, PJM issued Pre-Emergency Load Management Reduction actions, activating demand response by 10 AM. PJM has issued these alerts several times this summer, but even during late June’s heat wave, demand response was not activated until the afternoon. The plant at the center of these transmission outages, Brandon Shores, has been a high-profile facet of PJM’s growing capacity crunch. The plant’s operator, Talen Energy, sought to retire the plant as well as neighboring Herbet Wagner at the start of this summer. After identifying numerous transmission violations, PJM entered into reliability must-run agreements with Talen, to the tune of $180 million per year, to keep both plants online until May 2029. As temperatures continue to climb across the Mid-Atlantic, track the impact of load conservation efforts and pricing impacts in BGE with our PJM live page https://lnkd.in/e-KmEmNB

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Our CEO, Emilie Flanagan, joined NICO JOHNSON on the SunCast Media podcast this week to discuss Carson Power's early pivot to battery storage and why distributed energy is critical for America's energy future. The goal is a secure and resilient grid for everyone, and distributed generation is needed to meet surging electricity demands. In a wide ranging conversation, Emilie and Nico talk about how she got started in the field, the importance of transparent communication, and how Carson navigates the development process. Listen to the full conversation at the link in the comments.

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PJM has issued a Maximum Generation Alert as extreme cold drives demand across the footprint, with PJM noting peak demand could exceed 130,000 MW for seven straight days. To put that in perspective: 130,000 MW is ~80% of PJM’s all-time peak — and sustaining it for seven consecutive days is the notable part. A few practical takeaways for facility & energy teams: Reliability: Winter peaks can get tight fast, and conditions can change day-to-day. Cost exposure: If you’re on index, these are the windows where volatility tends to show up. Demand Response: PJM notes DR may be implemented — if you’re enrolled, make sure your playbook + contacts are current. If you want a quick “winter alert” checklist tailored to your sites, shoot us a message. #PJM #DemandResponse #EnergyManagement #GridReliability #EnergyProcurement

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PJM — the nation's largest grid operator — titled their July 2025 capacity auction press release: "Supply Responds to Price Signal." They're right that supply is responding. After capacity prices surged more than 800% in PJM's 2025/2026 delivery year auction, independent power producers announced roughly 12,000 MW in new generation projects across the PJM region. The industry association representing those producers called it "a definitive and robust market response." Here is the problem. PJM's own January 2026 long-term load forecast projects peak demand in their region alone climbing roughly 85 GW over the next 15 years, driven by data centers, electrification, and manufacturing growth. Against that backdrop, 12,000 MW of announced projects is not a solution. It is confirmation that the market has finally registered the problem. We should also be honest that some of the demand driving that urgency is itself speculative. When AEP Ohio introduced a tariff in 2025 requiring data centers to pay for 85% of contracted capacity whether they use it or not, their data center load queue fell from 30 GW to 13 GW, cut in half, simply by removing what the utility called "the most speculative or uncertain" requests. Real demand is growing fast. But not every interconnection request represents a data center that will actually get built. Even so, the supply side cannot close the gap. As of the end of 2024, 1,400 GW of generation capacity was actively seeking grid interconnection in the U.S. That number gets cited constantly as evidence that supply is coming. According to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's annual interconnection review, only 13% of capacity entering the queue between 2000 and 2019 ever reached commercial operation. 77% was withdrawn, not because the projects were speculative in intent, but because of the structural barriers every project faces: interconnection costs, permitting timelines, equipment lead times, and workforce constraints. Those barriers apply to every project in that queue regardless of how committed the developer is. I've spent the past several months building a framework that formalizes this — applying these constraints as sequential, compounding discount factors on contracted U.S. generation capacity. The gap between what's in the queue and what can physically be delivered within five years is not what most planning assumptions reflect. The math isn't complicated. The conclusion is uncomfortable. Full analysis coming soon. For those in resource planning, project development, or infrastructure investment — which of these constraints shows up most in your day-to-day work right now?

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Protecting the Grid and the Consumer: PJM to Extend Capacity Price Caps ⚡️🏛️ In a significant move for the U.S. energy market, the PJM Interconnection is set to extend its capacity auction price caps for an additional two years. This development, confirmed by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, marks a critical intervention in the nation’s largest power grid. The decision comes at a pivotal moment. As the grid faces the dual pressures of aging infrastructure retirements and a massive surge in demand from data centers and electrification, price volatility has become a primary concern for regulators and businesses alike. What this means for the energy landscape: * Market Stability: By extending the cap, PJM aims to prevent "price shocks" that could result from tightening supply margins. * Investment Signals: While the cap protects consumers, the industry is watching closely to see how this affects the incentive for new generation projects—particularly renewables and gas—needed to ensure long-term reliability. * Regulatory Alignment: The move highlights the increasing collaboration between grid operators and state leadership to balance affordability with the clean energy transition. As PJM navigates these complex market dynamics, the balance between "market-based signals" and "consumer protection" remains the most debated topic in the power sector today. We are here to help. Review your facility's energy plan here: https://lnkd.in/e3Ck8_zu #EnergyMarkets #PJM #PowerGrid #Utilities #EnergyPolicy #DataCenters #GridReliability #Pennsylvania #ElectricityPrices #CleanEnergyTransition Read more about this here: https://lnkd.in/eAdmBV45

NRG Energy told FERC that its purchase of generation and the CPower subsidiary from LS Power will not impact competition, despite some overlap in assets in New York and PJM. See Full Story: https://ow.ly/WHV150WaJ6E Writer: James Downing

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Our Head of USA East, Julia Hoos, spoke with Utility Dive about the latest PJM capacity auction. Julia shared her perspective on why new capacity struggled to show up – pointing to permitting, financing and supply constraints – and what the results suggest about PJM’s ability to meet growing demand while maintaining reliability in the years ahead. Read the full piece: https://lnkd.in/gKBMxJku

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PJM Transmission rates - where is the outrage? Electricity customers, utility regulators and politicians throughout PJM are upset because the market cleared price of firm capacity to meet customer power demands which had been about $34 per MW per day from June 2023 through May 2024 zoomed last year and is now $329/MW-day. That is quite a change, but the real outrage that almost no one is talking about is that transmission capacity costs are that high or higher in parts of PJM. The average cost of PJM transmission is about $250/MW-day, but in 5 zones, representing 25% of PJM load, customers pay more than $300/MW-day, and in one zone customers pay $659/MW-day, twice the new power price. Now that’s something to be upset about. The transmission facilities that PJM operates form an integrated network that is available to deliver power to all customers regardless where they reside, but PJM charges different delivery rates in each zone. The zones aren’t based on variations in PJM delivery costs, rather they are tied to the legacy utility service areas existing before the regional market was formed more than 20 years ago. There is one market for power in PJM and there should be one (fair, just and reasonable) PJM transmission rate. Truth be told, the new power capacity auction price is not out of line with costs. PJM estimates that the cost of new capacity (a.k.a. cost of new entry or CONE), is about $500/MW-day. Transmission prices by comparison are not in line with costs - so where is the outrage?

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Invenergy's Jim Murphy spoke on a panel at this year's American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE) Finance Forum, noting the importance of utilizing existing rights of way to expand grid capacity. "I think that there is plenty of interest in repowering, reconductoring, optimizing existing paths, and that should be done, for sure," Jim said. Advanced transmission technologies include infrastructure, hardware, and software tools that can quickly and cost-effectively add grid capacity. Expanding the existing system is key to meeting surging near-term demand growth. Check it out❗️

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