New year, same theme: data centers.
The PJM Interconnection’s market monitor is once again blaming data centers for the results of its latest capacity auction. Meanwhile, Texas’ large load queue exploded last year, largely due to — you guessed it! — data centers.
Here are those and other numbers that caught our eye in the early days of 2026.
►40%
How much revenues in the PJM Interconnection’s most recent capacity auction are attributable to data centers, both existing and forecast, according to the grid operator’s independent market monitor. The December auction was held to secure energy for the delivery year starting June 1, 2027. Data center load accounted for $6.5 billion, or 40%, of the $16.4 billion in costs to procure power supplies, it said. “The current conditions in the capacity market are almost entirely the result of large load additions from data centers, both actual historical and forecast,” it said. “The extreme uncertainty in the load forecasts based on uncertainty about the addition of large data center loads is also unique and unprecedented and raises questions about the meaning of clearing a capacity auction based on those forecasts.”
►300%
The approximate growth last year in the large load queue for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas region. Grid planners in Texas are assessing more than 233 GW of large load interconnection requests, with more than 70% coming from data centers, an official said at a December board of directors meeting. “We have outgrown the process that was established for reviewing these large loads,” said ERCOT Vice President of System Planning and Weatherization Kristi Hobbs. The Public Utility Commission of Texas, which regulates ERCOT, is working to implement a new state law, known as SB 6, that requires standardized interconnection rules and improvements to load forecasting.
►$1M to $5M
How much offshore wind developers, including utilities, say they are losing every day due to the Trump administration’s freeze on all construction of offshore wind facilities, according to legal filings. This week, Ørsted’s 924-MW Sunrise Wind project filed a legal challenge to the block, bringing the number of wind farms that are seeking relief from the courts to four of the five affected by the administration’s action. Dominion Energy Virginia, which was nearing completion on its 2.6-GW Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project, said the administration was refusing to divulge the nature of the national security concerns that it said necessitated the pause. It said the government’s actions depart from established practice of sharing information with critical infrastructure operators and foreclose “any possibility that the government will follow normal protocols.”
►$1.2B
How much the Midcontinent Independent System Operator expects to spend on an approximately 190-mile, 765-kV transmission project in Wisconsin. MISO announced this week that it had selected a joint venture of American Electric Power and Berkshire Hathaway Energy subsidiaries to build it. The project is part of MISO’s $22 billion Long-Range Transmission Plan Tranche 2.1 portfolio that the grid operator’s board approved in December 2024. In part, the portfolio of projects will create a 765-kV transmission backbone across MISO’s central and northern regions.
►5.5 GW
The capacity of gas generation assets Vistra is set to acquire with its purchase of Cogentrix Energy for a net purchase price of around $4 billion. The portfolio includes three combined-cycle gas turbine facilities and two combustion turbine facilities in PJM, four combined-cycle gas turbine facilities in ISO New England and one cogeneration facility in ERCOT. A Jefferies analyst said the move to get into New England “makes abundant sense,” calling ISO-NE “the most attractive power market in the U.S. given the seemingly unsustainably low price of capacity over time.” He added, however, that regulatory review uncertainty has increased since the Justice Department intervened in Constellation’s acquisition of Calpine, resulting in the first settlement consent decree the DOJ’s antitrust division has filed in an electricity merger in 14 years.
