Latest news with #electricutilities
Fast Company
21-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
How Pennsylvania is responding to increasing electricity bills
Americans' electricity bills tend to tick up each year in line with inflation. Subscribe to the Daily newsletter. Fast Company's trending stories delivered to you every day Privacy Policy | Fast Company Newsletters But Pennsylvania faces distinct challenges related to its electric grid – the maze of wires and generators – that drive both the growing demand for electricity and the limited supply. PJM and the electric grid Pennsylvania power plants produce a lot of electricity. In fact, the Keystone State is the the largest exporter of electricity in the U.S. and has been for many years. But the electricity Pennsylvania produces doesn't always stay in state. That's because Pennsylvania's electric grid is managed by a company called PJM. PJM coordinates the flow of electricity through all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, and it ensures the wholesale electricity transmission system operates reliably and safely. Pennsylvania electric utilities, such as PECO or Duquesne Light, then distribute this wholesale electricity to retail customers, including homeowners and renters. PJM requires the utilities to ensure ahead of time that they can meet their customers' future electricity demands, including during heat waves and winter storms. This requirement is met using a market called a 'capacity auction,' in which electricity suppliers bid to provide physical infrastructure that will generate electricity in the future. The prices at the 2025-2026 PJM capacity auction were more than 800% higher than the previous year, in part due to the growing demand for electricity within PJM. This amounts to tens of billions of dollars in extra costs. Power plants in Pennsylvania can't simply stop exporting electricity and supply more in-state power because they dispatch their power into the regional grid operated by PJM, and the flow of electricity is dictated by the physical structure of this grid. Soaring demand from data centers U.S. electricity demand rose 3% in 2024 and is expected to rise even more rapidly in the coming years. advertisement Bottlenecks in supply The increase in electricity demand within PJM is happening at the same time that supply is shrinking. Many old generating plants in the PJM grid are retiring as they near the end of their useful lives and become less profitable for plant operators, particularly as natural gas and solar become more affordable. Some of these older power plants also emit a lot of pollution and are costly to retrofit to meet current pollution limits. Beyond the challenge of plant retirements, PJM has been slow to allow hundreds of new proposed power plants – most of them solar- and battery-based – to connect to transmission lines. This long 'interconnection queue' prevents new, needed generation from coming online. This is happening even though companies are eager and ready to build more generation and battery storage. Aging infrastructure and growing weather extremes One of the primary recent drivers of high consumer electric bills is that the utilities have been slow to upgrade their aging wires. Many have recently made major investments in new infrastructure and in some cases are burying or strengthening wires to protect them from increasingly extreme weather. Electricity customers are footing the bill for this work. Response from policymakers In response to rising electricity prices, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro filed a legal complaint with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission against PJM in December 2024. This complaint blamed PJM's capacity auction design for creating unnecessary costs for consumers. According to the settlement reached after the complaint, PJM's price caps will be 35% lower at the next major capacity auction. This reduction in wholesale prices could limit retail price increases. But this is at best a temporary fix. It doesn't address the increasing demand, aging power infrastructure battered by extreme weather, or transmission bottleneck. In order for Pennsylvania residents to see lower electric bills anytime soon, more changes are needed. For example, many experts previously observed that PJM needs to fix the queue and get online the many power plants that are ready to build and just waiting for a transmission interconnection. While PJM has reformed its queue process, the queue is still long. New power plants are not going up fast enough, in part due to additional challenges such as local opposition and supply chain and financing issues. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
E&E News
19-05-2025
- Politics
- E&E News
Industry groups back FEMA as ‘essential' disaster agency
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, facing potential upheaval under President Donald Trump, has received a wave of support from powerful groups such as the wireless industry, electric utilities, power companies and real estate agents. They submitted testimony emphasizing the importance of FEMA in helping communities recover from disasters — and warning against the administration's plan to weaken the agency. 'Rather than shifting responsibility to states, FEMA's role at the federal level should be maintained,' the Large Public Power Council, which represents the nation's biggest public power systems, told a Trump-appointed council reviewing FEMA. Advertisement Comments received by the council in recent days have highlighted little-known FEMA activities that help maintain services such as electricity, water and wireless communications during a disaster. Trump's FEMA Review Council holds its first meeting Tuesday.
Yahoo
08-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
One Snake Manages to Shut Off Power In North Carolina, Leaving 10,000 People in the Dark
Nearly 10,000 people in North Carolina were left in the dark due to a power outage on Monday, May 5, caused by an unexpected source Duke Energy said the outage occurred after a snake came into contact with equipment at a substation The power company noted it was making "improvements," including "physical protections to keep squirrels, snakes, and other animals out of substations and other equipment" Thousands of North Carolina residents were left in the dark — all thanks to one snake. A spokesperson for Duke Energy, which provides electric utilities to customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and other states, told local outlets WBTV, WSOC-TV, and CBS17 that a power outage occurred on Monday, May 5, due to a black snake that came into contact with equipment at a substation. The outage began around 11 p.m., when the serpent came in contact with equipment in a Durham, North Carolina, substation. According to the outlets, the outage lasted about three hours, and power was restored around 1:30 a.m. Nearly 10,000 people were affected, including Immanuel Holland, who told CBS 17 that he had "woke up in the pitch dark" and noticed the light come "back on" at around 1:30 a.m. The spokesperson noted to WBTV that the company was investigating how the snake got into the Durham substation, as the facility had protective fencing to prevent animals from getting in. "We have been making grid improvements across our system to increase physical and cyber protections around essential equipment," the spokesperson told the outlet. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. "These improvements include physical protections to keep squirrels, snakes, and other animals out of substations and other equipment, and to keep power reliable for the communities we serve," they added. After the news broke about the snake causing the outage, customer Jamichael Daye told CBS17 that he felt "sorry for the snake cause he was probably just trying to be warm." According to a map shared by CBS17, the outage affected Durham, Forsyth, and Gaston. This isn't the first time that a snake caused problems for a power company. In 2017, a snake got caught in a power line at a Duke Energy substation in South Carolina and caused a power outage for approximately 5,000 customers in Greenville County, according to United Press International (UPI). At the time, Duke Energy noted that snakes are blamed for about 100 power outages yearly in the six states where the company operates, per UPI. While snakes may be one cause of power outages, they aren't the only animals that cause blackouts. U.S. animal-caused outages leave an estimated 13 million Americans without power annually, according to The Nature Conservancy. Read the original article on People
