NARUC Summer Policy Summit
Arshad Mansoor is the CEO of EPRI. Joseph Bowring is the President of Monitoring Analytics and Market Monitor at PJM. Mandy Ulrich is Senior Manager Energy and Water at Amazon Web Services. Sasha Weintraub is Chief Customer Officer at Duke Energy. Ellen Zuckerman is Head of Energy Markets at Google.
Data centers, AI, and load growth are inescapable now, as is state and federal authority over them. This series of speakers at the NARUC Summer Policy Summit grappled with meeting increased demands on the grid. Through their lens on emerging issues, along with technical expertise, the speakers offered unique takes on what’s working, what’s worrisome, and what’s wrong.
Excerpted here are Monitoring Analytics President and PJM Market Monitor Joseph Bowring, EPRI CEO Arshad Mansoor, Amazon Web Services Senior Manager Energy and Water Mandy Ulrich, Duke Energy Chief Customer Officer Sasha Weintraub, and Google Head of Energy Markets Ellen Zuckerman.
Monitoring Analytics President and PJM Market Monitor Joseph Bowring: PJM just ran a capacity auction for the 2028-’29 delivery year. PJM was short for the third year in a row for its reliability target. In other words, PJM is not buying enough capacity to maintain its one-in-ten-year reliability objectives.
Total cost of capacity: $16.4 billion. The cost directly resulting from the forecasted data center load is $6.3 billion or 38 percent. Data centers are needed but must pay their own way.