Next Month's Electric Bill

Folks, checking out the PJM grid page for current electric spot prices. OUCH! For context, spot electric prices during non-peak load times usually are under $40/MW. Baltimore-Washington is currently (7:15 AM EST) in the $300/MW range. That area is notoriously congested and under powered.

Given the wide swath of cold temperatures in the US, I suspect most grid operators are operating at peak load/max prices. There's no escaping it, most folks in this country are going to get a very high electric bill in March. Add that onto the January bills and couple that with already increasing prices and March is going to be a bad month for most folks. Hope all are really trying to throttle back on your electricity/natural gas use NOW because a reckoning is coming.

And while I'll be happy to blame Trump and Republicans in general, this has more to do with the bureaucracy of the grid operators than anything else. The nation's power generation has had a lot of retirements (plants that have reached their normal lifespan and need replacement). New plants have been slow to be approved and built. Often they are out of sync with transmission systems so those need adjusting. Couple that with increased electric demand from AI and data centers and we've gotten a perfect storm where demand routinely outstrips supply (especially during cold and hot weather spells). Bottom line, it's complicated and making it political will only exasperate the problem, not solve it.