What happened: FERC recently granted a complaint from third-party companies that organize demand-response programs, who claim PJM is violating the Federal Power Act. Their argument? To participate in power markets and pay customers, PJM requires these aggregators to provide smart meter data…but utilities won’t divulge that info, often citing state privacy laws. Yet such laws haven’t blocked VPP participation in other parts of the country. 

The issue: “VPPs are prevented from accessing that information to bring down power prices, even when customers WANT to participate,” wrote Michael Murray, president of Mission:data, a coalition of aggregators that filed the complaint (along with VPP operator Voltus). This logjam strands “gigawatts” of capacity, Emily Orvis, Voltus’s VP of energy markets, told Canary Media.  

What’s next: In cases when these companies can’t get customer info, they want to estimate demand-response impacts through statistical sampling. But PJM claims this would “degrade” data accuracy. Now, FERC is mulling over the next steps. 🤔

While we’re here: The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld FERC’s Order 2023, the agency’s effort to shorten interconnection queues and bring more renewables onto the grid (which faced a legal challenge from grid operators and utilities).

Balancing act: AEP has contracted 69 GW of load growth through 2030. But the company says it’s shielding residential customers of its vertically integrated utilities from added costs.

How? The $16B in savings stem from “agreements and rate structures we have worked with our states,” Tammy Ridout, AEP’s managing director of external communications, told Energy Central over email. These take-or-pay service agreements ensure that “large-load customers pay for grid infrastructure that serves them.” 

Plus: AEP estimates $1.4B in customer savings due to federal loads and grants. 

NextEra Energy reported a 9.5% year-over-year boost in adjusted earnings per share. And subsidiary Florida Power & Light has upped its large-load demand forecast by 33% (from 6 GW to 8 GW).

Exelon’s “high probability” data center pipeline has shrunk by almost 40% since late 2025 (now landing at 11 GW). Why? The company is working to “weed out speculative projects,” CFO Jeanne Jones said. Plus, Exelon utilities are inking agreements with interested data center customers to shield other ratepayers from upfront costs.

Xcel Energy is planning to meet rising data center demand (a pipeline >20 GW) with 11.4 GW of renewables, 3.4 GW in gas generation, and 2.2 GW of storage. Oh, and roughly 1.7K miles of new transmission lines.

The context: Texas senators recently debated a $33B plan for new high-voltage lines across the Lone Star State, which would include over 2.4K miles of 765-kV lines (marking one of the country’s biggest grid expansions). The goal? Send power from East Texas to the capacity-strapped West, where oil & gas industry growth is contributing to booming demand.

The supporters: Fossil fuel producers want more electrons headed their way—ASAP.

The critics: Residents (including country singer Tanya Tucker) highlighted how some planned lines would cut through communities and natural areas. Plus, some opponents of the Texas renewable buildout argue that the new lines could incentivize more wind and solar generation by carrying the power farther.

And out East, ISO-NE is eyeing a transmission upgrade that would send more of Maine’s wind power to demand-heavy regions of southern New England, where energy bills continue to rise.

The details: Ameren wants the Missouri PSC’s permission to apply the Construction Work in Progress (CWIP) financing scheme to its proposed gas plant. Under this scheme, utilities can recover costs for generation and transmission before they come online. It’s now permitted in over 40 states, including Missouri (which reversed a five-decade CWIP ban last year).

The conflict: Ameren says CWIP can reduce customer charges by lowering some financing costs, but consumer advocates disagree. After all, the CWIP scheme hasn’t had the best PR: Georgia households have paid roughly $1K each in CWIP charges since 2009 due to Vogtle nuclear reactor delays.

Power couple: AI infrastructure company Crusoe and nuclear developer Aalo Atomics (one of the four companies to reach criticality under the DOE’s Reactor Pilot Program) are partnering to bring modular reactors to data centers. After a pilot project at Idaho National Lab, they aim to install Aalo reactors at Crusoe’s data centers by 2029 (these facilities are built or planned throughout the US).

Plus, an SMR swap: The NRC has approved Holtec’s plan to clear the site of the shuttered Oyster Creek nuclear plant. Its replacement? Four new SMR units with a total expected capacity of 1.4 GW (more than 2x the capacity of the retired plant). Holtec is hoping to power them on in 2036.

And on the fusion front: Commonwealth Fusion Systems has now raised $4B…but it likely won’t go public for a few years.