Welcome to Wednesday. Coming soon to a dock near you: Floating nuclear power. Startup Bluecore Energy just raised $10M to build SMRs on barges. The goal? Funnel portable energy to where it’s needed, including the local grid, via subsea cables. Caveat: The US has yet to see a commercially operating SMR…but now, perhaps these can finally set sail. ⛵
— Molly, Carrie, and the Energy Central editorial team
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Can tomorrow’s PJM conference fix a growing grid chasm?
Fill out our bingo board—whether you’re attending the meeting or catching up afterward.
🔬 FERC is about to put PJM under the microscope. The agency is inviting the experts to poke holes in the grid operator’s decision-making processes. Why?
In case you didn’t know: “PJM is really struggling to get stuff done,” Abe Silverman, a research scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute, told us.
Exhibit A: PJM’s years-long effort to unclog its interconnection queue. Exhibit B: Its skyrocketing capacity prices (and ongoing capacity shortfalls). This begs the question: How much of this struggle stems from PJM’s governing structure?
If you ask state officials and consumer advocates…a lot. Many think PJM gives too much power to industry members like utilities and generators—and doesn’t see energy affordability as its primary responsibility. As the grid operator kicks off market reforms, this tension is clearer than ever. “If you end up with a system where state [officials] feel like they’re not being listened to, then there’s a real potential the whole organization falls apart,” Silverman told us.
This disconnect comes with a major cost. PJM’s market signals lose credibility without the support of the region’s political forces, he noted, which can worry investors on the supply and demand sides.
Tying it all together: Tomorrow’s conference will dig into ways “to restore confidence” in PJM, Silverman explained. Some ideas to accomplish that:
Create a state committee to “foster PJM alignment with state policy/economic development perspective,” as suggested by former FERC Chair Pat Wood
Give states filing rights, like SPP does
Offer states and ratepayer advocates input on PJM’s Board of Managers
The takeaway, according to Silverman: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” ⚔️
Congress is targeting data centers in an updated version of the Ratepayer Protection Act.
The background: The bill, which just advanced to the House of Representatives, would create a federal standard to make large loads pay for transmission upgrades and new generation…and states would be required to consider it. Legislators recently edited the bill to exclusively cover data centers (an earlier draft included all large loads 100 MW or above).
The takeaway: The update puts more pressure on data centers, backing ratepayer concerns. So far, the bill is still receiving bipartisan support—but Democrats also want to tackle data centers’ pollution and water use.
In other data center news: Not long after enacting NY’s one-year data center ban, Gov. Kathy Hochul is pushing to scrap state and local tax breaks for these facilities.
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As temperatures soar in Texas, ERCOT demand reaches new heights.
The details: The Lone Star State is experiencing its hottest days of the year (so far). Last night, demand hit a record 87 GW…and it could continue to climb this week.
BlackRock’s $33B attempt to buy AES is getting messy.
The deal: In March, news broke that BlackRock is leading a group looking to buy AES Corp for $33.4B. AES owns Indianapolis Power & Light Company and Dayton Power & Light Company, which serve over 1M customers.
The speedbump: Public Citizen and other consumer advocacy groups are demanding that FERC reject the merger, claiming it violates public interest. The issue? As former FERC Chair Mark Christie noted in 2025, asset managers like BlackRock could “use their ownership of competing assets to exert market power in wholesale energy, capacity, and ancillary services markets.”
Do blockbuster utility deals help or hurt the grid?
A new 1-GW data center on federal land is embracing the BYO energy movement (with 2 GW of capacity).
The snapshot: The DOE just announced plans for a massive data center at its South Carolina complex for nuclear waste management and disposal (making good on the Trump administration’s goal to use federal lands for AI development).
The power source: Engineering firm Amentum is building around 2 GW of on-site generation. This consists of “natural gas bridging to nuclear energy,” the DOE wrote. The goal is to send some of that power back to the grid.
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Thanks for reading. TTYL!