Jeff Guo

Local power distributors basically have to pay power plant operators just for existing, whether or not those power plants ever generate any actual power to sell.

So it was relatively easy for power generators to keep up with any demand growth.

But Kathy says the moment when a kajillion data centers showed up and started wanting more and more and more power, things really broke down.

It turned out the capacity market was not great at dealing with this kind of scenario.

The amount local utilities across PJM had to shell out went up by $12 billion in one year.

Again, not to actually buy any electricity, just to guarantee that there would even be enough electricity to buy in the future.

And that $12 billion extra, it got spread out across the electric bills of all the customers in the PGM region, including Ken and Carol in Ohio.

Yeah, remember, what an energy company is selling in the capacity market is its ability to supply power whenever demand is at its peak.

And solar panels, they cannot generate power at night.

Wind turbines can't make much power on calm days.

In an email, a PJM spokesperson said, "...this narrative is old and it's no longer true, that PJM had done a good job clearing the backlog of power plants waiting to connect."

But the experts I spoke to said it was still a problem.

Kathy says it's important to keep in mind why all of this is happening.

A bunch of tech companies are in a big hurry to build data centers, which is creating a huge surge in demand for power.

For some of those projects, companies are building their own on-site power plants.

But the rest of that demand will have to be absorbed by the rest of the electricity system.

Everyone's got their own idea of the best way to fix things.

You know, maybe we should make it easier for new power plants to connect to the grid.

Or maybe we should stop connecting new data centers altogether until power supply catches up to demand.

In the meantime, more data centers are being built that will need more power, which the Kens and Carols of the world will have to keep paying for.