PJM Winter Outlook: Record Peak, Thin Cushion if Gas & Wind Stumble
PJM Interconnection, which runs the power grid for 67 million people in 13 states (including PA, OH and WV) and D.C., issued its winter outlook yesterday. The short version: the lights should stay on this winter, even though PJM expects demand to set a new winter record. But a slide deck PJM presented to its Operating Committee the same day shows how thin the cushion gets if the wind stops blowing and a big gas supply problem hits at the same time. And it shows, once again, which fuel carries the load: natural gas. Read More “PJM Winter Outlook: Record Peak, Thin Cushion if Gas & Wind Stumble”
Yesterday we told you how small-town Ohio voters clobbered data centers at the ballot box (see 
Yesterday, Ohio voters had their first big chance to vote directly on data centers, and the data centers got clobbered. There were 21 data center ballot measures in 18 Ohio towns, villages, and townships (more than half of the 41 on ballots across the country). Voters in at least 14 of those places passed bans or new restrictions, most of them by margins of roughly 3-to-1 or 4-to-1. For MDN readers, the biggest single loss came in tiny Ashville (Pickaway County, just south of Columbus). There, about 82% of voters struck down the village’s deal with EdgeConneX for two data centers and an on-site gas-fired power plant of up to 800 megawatts (MW). Below are the scorecard, the gas angle, who’s behind the bans, and what comes next. 
Dominion Energy, Virginia’s biggest electric utility, reported third-quarter results on Friday. On the earnings call, CEO Bob Blue talked up offshore wind, solar, and batteries. He said almost nothing about natural gas. The gas news is in the fine print instead. Dominion’s new long-range plan, filed with Virginia regulators on Oct. 15, calls for nearly 9 gigawatts (GW) of new gas-fired power plants. That’s more than the company’s entire Virginia gas fleet today! Dominion is also pushing ahead with gas plants in Chesterfield County, VA, and South Carolina. Meanwhile, the planned $67 billion merger with NextEra Energy faces its make-or-break Virginia hearing, which starts Nov. 17. 
Back in January, we told you that Vistra Corp. had agreed to buy Cogentrix Energy and its 10 natural gas-fired power plants from private equity firm Quantum Capital Group for about $4 billion (see 
The state that banned fracking, blocks pipelines, and has a law on the books requiring a zero-emissions grid by 2040 may soon get new gas-fired power plants. National Grid Ventures, the unregulated arm of utility National Grid, has filed requests with New York’s grid operator (NYISO) to build three new natural gas units at two of its old Long Island power plants: the E.F. Barrett station in Island Park (Nassau County) and the Northport Power Station (Suffolk County). Taken together, the three units add up to about 1,481 megawatts (MW) of new gas-fired generation in summer, and 1,584 MW in winter. New York Focus calls it the clearest sign yet of a “gas renaissance” in the Empire State. We call it reality knocking on Albany’s door. 
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) says it plans to approve the air permit for Aligned Data Centers’ giant “Project Phoenix” campus at the former Bruce Mansfield coal plant site in Shippingport (Beaver County, PA). The campus will run on Marcellus/Utica natural gas, but it won’t burn the gas. Aligned plans to make its own electricity with solid oxide fuel cells, which turn gas into power through a chemical reaction instead of combustion. DEP published its notice in Saturday’s Pennsylvania Bulletin and scheduled a public hearing for Thursday, December 3, in Shippingport. Get the popcorn ready. 
Round two. A month after FERC accepted PJM Interconnection’s one-time “emergency” power auction for data centers and then froze it for five months (see 
In June, we told you that 194 landowners in Salem Township (Luzerne County, near Berwick) were lining up to become AI millionaires by selling their land for a giant new data center project (see 
Anthropic, the San Francisco company behind the Claude artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, filed its initial public offering (IPO) paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Monday (Oct. 26). Buried in the 318-page prospectus, in a risk section titled “Electrical Power and Fuel Constraints,” is an admission that should make every Marcellus/Utica driller, pipeline company, and royalty owner sit up and take notice: some of Anthropic’s planned data centers will run on their own dedicated, on-site natural gas-fired power plants. And Anthropic’s big worry isn’t the gas itself. It’s getting enough pipeline capacity to deliver it. 
Last Thursday, Google announced it will pay a San Francisco company called Voltus to round up as much as 1,070 megawatts (MW) of electricity “capacity” on the PJM Interconnection grid, the 13-state (plus D.C.) grid that includes Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. Google, Voltus, and nearly every news outlet covering the story call it a “virtual power plant.” Pardon us, but there is no such thing. No turbine spins. No Marcellus gas burns. What Google is actually doing is paying homes and businesses to use less electricity when the grid gets tight, so that Google’s power-hungry data centers can use more. Let’s call it what it is and quit with the euphemisms. 
Another one bites the dust in northeastern Pennsylvania. On Wednesday night, Archbald Borough Council (Lackawanna County) voted 7-0 to deny a zoning request for the Wildcat Ridge Data Center Campus, a 14-building AI “hyperscale” project proposed for roughly 575 acres on the mountainside above Business Route 6. The campus would have needed 1.6 gigawatts (GW) of electricity, more than 3.3 million gallons of water per day in summer, and 588 diesel-powered backup generators. About 175-200 residents packed the borough building’s gym and erupted in cheers when the vote came down. The developer, Brooklyn-based Cornell Realty Management, isn’t talking, but just about everyone in the room expects an appeal to county court. Why should Marcellus folks care? Because 1.6 GW of new, around-the-clock electric demand is, in our neck of the woods, a gas demand story. 
The Homer City Energy Campus in Indiana County, PA — the largest natural gas-fired power plant under construction anywhere in the U.S. — just ticked off a few nice milestones. Construction contractor Kiewit marked one year on the job, the workforce has topped 2,000, and the first of seven giant gas turbines is now sitting on its foundation. Meanwhile, Amazon’s plan to build 36 data centers next door is officially on the county’s review clock; the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) just held a hearing on the plant’s water discharge permit, and the usual suspects are still fighting the plant’s air permit. Here’s where things stand. 
NextEra Energy, the largest electric power company in North America (and parent of Florida Power & Light), reported third-quarter 2026 results yesterday. Adjusted earnings came in at $2.592 billion ($1.24 per share), up 9.7% per share from a year ago. But the real news came during the Q&A with Wall Street analysts. Just two days earlier, Virginia regulators’ own staff recommended denying NextEra’s $67 billion takeover of Dominion Energy as proposed—and Gov. Abigail Spanberger demanded a six-year rate freeze. NextEra CEO John Ketchum didn’t blink, saying he looks forward to “prosecuting this case.” Meanwhile, NextEra keeps going deeper into natural gas: more than 18 gigawatts (GW) of its 20+ GW of data center power projects are gas-fired, including a giant gas plant in Fayette County, PA. And NextEra has spent more than $1 billion this year buying into shale wells. Not bad for a company that once said it was getting out of gas!