PJM Regulatory Bullish
Ohio wants PJM to route 10 GW of data center around the queue
The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio asked PJM to open the State Agreement Approach under Order 1000 to interconnect the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus, 10 GW of data center with a gas plant built alongside it. The State Agreement Approach means Ohio ratepayers, not the whole RTO, carry the upgrade cost, which is how you get something this big past the queue. If it lands, it's the single largest block of new load and new gas burn PJM has taken on at once.
RTO Insider · Sep 7, 2026 FERC
ISO-NE PJM Regulatory Neutral
FERC's September sheet has ISO-NE tariff revisions on it
The monthly open meeting agenda carries proposed revisions to the ISO-NE Markets and Services Tariff plus a NERC proposal on protecting transmission assets, alongside a stack of 205 filings. Nothing on the list moves a price this week. But if you're marking New England capacity or reserves, the ISO-NE items are the ones worth reading before the gavel, not after.
RTO Insider · Sep 7, 2026 FERC
Neutral
MISO's 2026 transmission plan blew past $17 billion
MISO's 2026 transmission expansion portfolio cleared $17 billion, making it the biggest single-year build the footprint has ever put up. Congestion relief eventually shows up as tighter basis and fewer scarcity hours. The network charge shows up on bills a lot sooner than that, so don't model the two on the same timeline.
RTO Insider · Sep 7, 2026
Bullish
The people buying small reactors aren't utilities, they're hyperscalers and the Pentagon
Advanced nuclear deals are getting done on a three-party model where the large customer eats the development risk and the utility just integrates the power. A Los Alamos County utility manager pegged SMRs at $120/MWh equivalent and called that comparable to what new gas units cost right now. That's the tell on where firm capacity is priced, and it isn't cheap.
Utility Dive · Sep 4, 2026
NAT GAS Bullish
Feedgas is back after Edouard and the heat runs through mid-September
LNG feedgas demand is recovering after Tropical Storm Edouard knocked it down, and forecasts keep the continental U.S. well above normal into mid-September. Record dry gas production and above-average inventories are the counterweight, so this isn't one-sided. Front month sits near $2.92 with $2.88 to $2.90 holding as support and $3.03 the level that opens the next leg.
FXEmpire · Sep 4, 2026
ISO-NE Bearish
New England's three offshore farms hit 930 MW at the evening ramp
Vineyard Wind 1, Revolution Wind and their sibling combined for 930 MW on the evening of Aug. 30, the highest instantaneous offshore output ISO-NE has recorded. The timing is what matters. That's zero-fuel-cost supply landing right at the hour gas units usually set the price. More nights like that means fewer hours where the marginal unit is an expensive one.
RTO Insider · Sep 3, 2026
NYISO NAT GAS Bullish
Only 5% of upstate heat pump buyers actually cut the gas line
National Grid's New York counsel pushed back on the claim that its gas and electric forecasts conflict, and the numbers he used are the story. About 60% of heat pump conversions in Niagara Mohawk territory come off oil or propane, not gas, and only 5% of adopters fully disconnect. So the design-day gas load stays put, and so does the case for the gas system that serves it.
Utility Dive · Sep 3, 2026
Bullish
MISO went to emergency procedures in September, and hit 123 GW doing it
An early September heat dome pushed MISO into short-lived emergency procedures across the entire footprint and drove a 123 GW peak on Sept. 2, the highest September load it has ever served. September isn't supposed to do that. Shoulder season keeps getting shorter, and anyone who priced fall load off a normal year is going to eat the difference.
RTO Insider · Sep 3, 2026
Neutral
A one-degree miss costs Santee Cooper $100,000 an hour, so it's handing the forecast to Google
Santee Cooper is moving load forecasting onto Google's WeatherNext 2, an inference-based model that runs out 15 days instead of the 24 to 48 hours physics models handle well. The CFO says a one-degree variance swings roughly 100 MW an hour, and getting caught short means buying emergency power at up to $100,000 an hour. Every retailer with a load book runs that same math, just without a state balance sheet behind it.
Utility Dive · Sep 3, 2026
ERCOT Bullish
ERCOT just ran six straight weeks above the old record and the heat hasn't quit
Hourly load in ERCOT averaged a record 74.5 GW for the week ending Aug 22 and 73.7 GW the week after. That's 10% above anything summer 2025 produced and 6% over the 2023 record of 70.0 GW, and every week since July 25 has cleared the old mark. Sustained load like this keeps scarcity in the real-time stack and it's happening while ERCOT audits data center interconnection requests under the Abbott moratorium.
EIA · Sep 3, 2026
PJM ERCOT Bullish
Wind PPAs are up 17.5% in a year and 44 GW is stuck at the Pentagon
ACP's Q2 report has land-based wind PPAs at $83.79/MWh against solar at $61.40, a record $22.39 gap, with wind up 17.5% year over year. About 44 GW of wind sits frozen in Department of Defense review, and ACP says PJM remains a major bottleneck. Fewer viable projects means the ones that clear command a premium, and buyers desperate for power on a short timeline pay it.
Utility Dive · Sep 3, 2026
NAT GAS Bullish
Gas reclaimed the 50-day and 100-day, and $3.20 is the next stop
Front-month gas pushed to $3.03 Thursday before sellers took it back to $2.89, but the bottom consolidation reversal triggered last week and both the 50-day and 100-day moving averages are back underneath. A close above $2.99 confirmed the breakout. Next targets are the 61.8% retracement at $3.07, then $3.20, with the 200-day at $3.29 as the real test.
FXEmpire · Sep 3, 2026
PJM Bullish
DOE cleared PJM to run the backup units one step short of rolling blackouts
Energy Secretary Chris Wright authorized PJM late Tuesday to dispatch backup generation as a last resort before a level 3 energy emergency alert, with 90-plus degree heat hitting Chicago, St. Louis and D.C. PJM's maximum generation emergency has generators on planned outage reporting how fast they can come back. MISO was calling for about 121 GW, close to its 127.1 GW record, and raised its reserve requirement.
Insurance Journal · Sep 3, 2026
PJM Regulatory Bearish
Thirteen lines, $15.3B of value, and $6.7B of it lands in PJM
S&P Global's CERA Consulting ran 13 inter- and intraregional projects across the Eastern Interconnection for the Electricity Customer Alliance and National Grid, and got up to $15.3B in net value through 2050 at a 1.77 benefit-cost ratio. PJM takes $6.7B of it. The mechanism is boring and it's the point: wires that let cheap generation reach expensive load cut production costs and avoid local builds.
Utility Dive · Sep 2, 2026
Bullish
Google paid up for 396 MW of geothermal, and that tells you what firm power costs now
Fervo signed the largest geothermal PPA ever with Google, 396 MW out of Cape Station in Utah with an option to take it to nearly 1 GW by 2030. William Blair says it lifts Fervo's contracted revenue about 65%. Hyperscalers writing checks this size for first-of-a-kind baseload is the clearest read on how scarce dispatchable capacity has gotten.
Utility Dive · Sep 2, 2026
NAT GAS Bullish
Gas is knocking on $3.00 again, and this storage print decides it
September heat forecasts kept firming and futures pushed back to the $3 handle Wednesday. Consensus is looking for a build near 31 Bcf, lean against the five-year average, which is the first thing that's gone the bulls' way in weeks. Record Lower-48 production is still the ceiling, so a tight number matters more than usual here.
FX Empire · Sep 2, 2026
ERCOT Regulatory Bearish
ERCOT blew the Batch Zero deadline, and the data centers still don't know where they stand
ERCOT missed its deadline to tell transmission and distribution providers which of their data center customers made the conditional cut in the Batch Zero study. The same TAC meeting rejected the 2027 ancillary services methodology. Every week the queue stays unresolved is a week that load doesn't show up on the system, and load that doesn't show up doesn't bid for energy.
RTO Insider · Sep 1, 2026
ISO-NE Regulatory Bearish
New England's scarcity penalty just got cut by two thirds
FERC signed off on dropping the ISO-NE pay-for-performance rate from $9,337/MWh to $3,500/MWh, and said the lower number still gets generators to show up. Constellation and FirstLight pushed back. Load pays that transfer during shortage events, so a smaller rate means smaller bills when the system gets tight.
RTO Insider · Sep 1, 2026
Regulatory Bullish
BNEF says the batteries take the hit, and some projects just die
Storage carries more near-term risk from the Aug. 26 bulk power order than anything else on the grid, per BloombergNEF. China holds 80% of lithium-ion supply chain capacity, and Chinese firms supplied roughly 40% of U.S. inverter volumes last year. Developers will wait on guidance, redesign, or cancel outright. Batteries that don't get built are peak hours nobody shaves.
Utility Dive · Sep 1, 2026
NAT GAS Bullish
LNG pulled 17.4 Bcf/d out of the domestic market in the first half, up 23%
Plaquemines is running full, Corpus Christi Stage 3 has six of seven trains going, and Golden Pass started in April. EIA has 2H26 holding at 17.3 Bcf/d and 1H27 at 18.7. TTF averaged $14.74/MMBtu and JKM hit a four-year high, so the pull isn't going away. That's a standing bid against Henry Hub that gets bigger every quarter.
EIA · Sep 1, 2026
Regulatory Neutral
MISO wants PMUs on the data centers before they plug in
MISO asked FERC on Friday to require visibility, phasor measurement, ramp limits and ride-through from large loads, with a separate "computational load" class for anything carrying 25 MW or more of IT gear. Effective date requested is Dec. 4, and more filings come by Nov. 16. ERCOT and PJM already went here. Tighter gates slow the load, better ride-through cuts the trip risk, and those two pull opposite ways on price.
Utility Dive · Sep 1, 2026
NYISO Regulatory Neutral
NYISO put two projects back in the 2027 budget after stakeholders pushed
Staff told the Budget and Priorities Working Group that two items cut in the first pass are back, including transmission congestion contract work. It's a small line on the ISO's own spend, which load funds through Schedule 1. Worth watching because the prioritization fight decides which market upgrades actually land, but there's no price signal in it yet.
RTO Insider · Sep 1, 2026
NAT GAS Bearish
Hugh Brinson turns on today, and the tape already sold it
Energy Transfer's line starts moving Permian gas toward East Texas and the Henry Hub area on Sept. 1, eventually 2.2 Bcf/d. October futures settled at $2.862 Friday, back under $3, with Lower 48 dry production at 113 Bcf/d and storage 5.5% above the five-year average. Traders priced the supply before the first molecule moved.
FX Empire · Sep 1, 2026