Why electricity bills are rising
Grid demand is growing again — led by data centers, electrification and industrial load. The cost of guaranteeing enough capacity is rising with it, and that cost flows through to the supply portion of your bill.
What actually changed
Nobody raised your rate on purpose.
They ran out of headroom.
Every year, grid operators hold an auction to pay generators for being available — not for the power you use, but for the promise it'll be there on the worst day of the year. It's called capacity, and it's normally a quiet line item.
Then demand forecasts exploded. PJM — the operator covering 65 million people from the Midwest to the Atlantic — now projects peak demand rising 32 gigawatts by 2030, with data centers accounting for all but two of them. Supply didn't keep pace. The auction price did what auctions do when demand outruns supply.
The 2028–29 auction only stopped at $325 because Pennsylvania's governor negotiated a cap. Without it, the number would have been higher.
PJM capacity price
$ / megawatt-dayThe bone rule on the final bar marks the negotiated price cap. Capacity costs flow into the supply half of residential bills across the five PJM markets we serve — Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Ohio and D.C.
