Overview
- PJM warned of and managed near‑record load after peak demand climbed to roughly 162–163 gigawatts during the heat wave, forcing maximum‑generation and hot‑weather alerts.
- The Department of Energy issued an emergency order that lets PJM temporarily exceed some pollution limits and direct very large customers to run onsite backup generators to free capacity.
- Operating reserves fell sharply to about 5,091 megawatts from roughly 11,000 megawatts, and wholesale prices spiked into the thousands of dollars per megawatt‑hour in parts of the footprint.
- Demand‑response programs, conservation requests and local measures such as voltage throttling kept rolling blackouts from occurring so far while crews repaired outages.
- Grid operators and market monitors say rapid data‑center buildout explains most projected peak growth and higher capacity costs, which raises the risk of repeated summer stress without faster transmission upgrades and new capacity.