PJM Interconnection's latest capacity auction cleared at $329.17 per megawatt-day — the market price ceiling — up from $28.92 per megawatt-day in the 2024-2025 auction, an increase of roughly 11 times in a single year [1]. The independent market monitor attributed 63% of the price increase to data-center load growth. That attribution translates to $9.3 billion in costs that will be recovered from customers across PJM's 13-state grid in higher electricity rates [2]. Ratepayers started paying those higher rates in June 2026.
The paper tracked the DOE 202(c) emergency orders and FERC cost-shift bar across two July 6 articles and the FERC homeowner-billing ruling, noting that those were dated emergency instruments addressing the heat crisis specifically. The $329.17/MW-day capacity-market clearance is a different instrument: it is structural and ongoing. Emergency orders expire. Capacity-market auction results run for the delivery year they cover. The $9.3 billion recovery does not expire [1].
The household bill is where the abstract becomes concrete. The Natural Resources Defense Council projects an average of $70 more per month by 2028 for a typical family in PJM territory if data-center load growth continues at its current pace [3]. That projection is a forecast, not a receipt. The receipt for June 2026 is $1.4 billion in additional annual capacity costs, starting now, distributed across residential and commercial ratepayers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, and the District of Columbia [2].
The IEEFA analysis identifies how the cost attribution works. Capacity markets charge all load-serving entities — the utilities that buy power on behalf of ratepayers — based on how much capacity they need to meet peak demand. Data centers are load-serving entities' largest new customers in the PJM region. Their demand drives the need for additional capacity. The capacity market charges for that additional capacity. The utilities pass the cost to ratepayers. The data centers' contracts with utilities typically do not include the capacity charge as a directly billable line item [2].
That pass-through structure is exactly what the FERC cost-shift ruling last week addressed at the interconnection-cost level — requiring data centers that connect new facilities to the grid to bear those connection costs directly, rather than socializing them across the existing ratepayer base. That ruling is prospective; it does not claw back the $9.3 billion already baked into the 2026-2027 delivery year [3].
The data-center industry's counterargument has two components: that load growth overall, not data centers specifically, drove the capacity crunch; and that data centers have invested in on-site generation and reliability measures that reduce their burden on the grid at critical moments. The market monitor's 63% attribution figure speaks to the first argument. The DOE 202(c) emergency order, which last week designated data centers as loads to be curtailed before residential customers during emergencies, speaks to the second [1].
The paper's frame since the heat emergency began: every AI-campus claim about grid contribution should be tested against whether the campus actually carries power, water, and backup receipts in the public record. The $329.17/MW-day clearance is one of those receipts. The $1.4 billion annual additional cost starting in June is another. Neither is a forecast. Both are in the settlement records of the PJM capacity market.
-- DARA OSEI, London