Stories
Data-driven stories from the US power grid — events like demand peaks and winter storms, told with an interactive map and the numbers behind them.
How electricity markets price power around the world
New Zealand prices electricity at individual nodes. Australia’s National Electricity Market sets five regional prices, and Alberta has one hourly pool price. Compare wholesale pricing rules across the world’s grids.
Dominion’s October Demand Rose 12.2% as PJM Revisits Data-Center Growth
Dominion’s average October demand rose 12.2 percent in a year, AEP’s rose 6.3 percent and the Mid-Atlantic’s barely changed. PJM’s new data-center outlook depends on which loads and supply projects arrive.
ERCOT’s Battery Proposal Would Dispatch Locally and Pay Regionally
Across 882 dispatch runs on November 1–3, Ask the Grid found 323 with a resource node below −$5/MWh while all eight load zones exceeded $5/MWh. ERCOT’s proposed battery aggregation model would dispatch locally while retaining regional settlement.
New England Opens a Wholesale Route for Small Batteries and Flexible Loads
Small resources can now register together in ISO New England’s wholesale markets, starting at 100 kW. Across eight zones, evening real-time prices averaged above midday prices in the week spanning the opening.
AEP Plans $5 Billion in Grid Upgrades for Piketon Data Center
The proposed 10.4 GW Piketon data center would start with 800 MW on existing transmission, followed by three planned 3.2 GW additions targeted for 2028–2030. Ask the Grid finds 24 generation queue entries totaling 3.68 GW under construction in AEP's PJM footprint, with solar accounting for 64% of the requested capacity.
Grid Forecast Accuracy: Comparing Five U.S. Power Markets
Across four New York zones, weekly day-ahead and real-time averages were $1.48/MWh apart, while the mean absolute hourly gap was $12.71/MWh. Our frozen study also finds concentrated price-error tails and 49.2% lower error in ERCOT's later load forecasts.
California Cut Power to Limit Fire Risk as Santa Ana Winds Arrived
Dry offshore winds prompted preventive power shutoffs across California from October 14 through 17. Utility records trace the interruptions and restoration effort, while weather forecasts and CAISO market data show how local fire risk shaped an event that left broader grid conditions within their recent range.
SPP Advances a $23.7 Billion Grid Expansion as Congestion Costs Rise
SPP's policy committee has endorsed a $23.7 billion transmission plan ahead of a scheduled November 17 Board vote. Congestion components at its two hubs were about four times higher in 2024 than in 2019. The proposed backbone pairs long-distance lines with local upgrades as the region plans for tens of gigawatts of new demand.
FERC Wants Faster Gas Reviews. One Power-Plant Pipeline Still Targets 2029.
FERC’s October 15 draft policy would change how it assesses operational air emissions. Three project case studies, preliminary EIA fleet data and individual power-plant gas postings trace the distance between a faster review and electricity on the grid.
Why DOE Is Intervening in PJM and MISO
What the outage data and MISO’s capacity results reveal about DOE’s emergency interventions—and the conditions that could ease or prolong them.
What's Going On in PJM
An Ask the Grid reconstruction finds a changing outage mix, a 4.69 GW shift toward Dominion and Mid-Atlantic load, and a $600.60/MWh BGE–Western Hub price gap. How October's operating pressure connects to PJM's capacity shortfall, data-center forecasts and supply pipeline.
New England Wind Output Reached 2 GW During September’s Nor’easter
New England's combined wind output reached about 2 GW on September 27 during a nor'easter. Operating observations trace the multiday rise alongside ISO-NE's account of strong winds, local service interruptions and a lower-demand market week.
MISO Repriced Its July Emergency After Record Imports
MISO drew a record amount of scheduled power from neighboring grids during the July 15 heat emergency. Then a correction to its emergency prices changed what some of those transactions were worth. In the independent market monitor’s published interface-trading table, an original $8.96 million profit became a $9.86 million loss—an $18.82 million change for the trades in that table.
Portland General Electric Began Trading in the West’s Expanded Day-Ahead Market
Portland General Electric began buying and selling electricity through the Extended Day-Ahead Market on October 1. The operational entry adds Oregon’s largest electric utility to a market designed to coordinate energy and flexibility across a broader western footprint before the operating day.
Montour’s Average Congestion Discount Nearly Doubled
Ask the Grid matched 6,528 hourly prices per year at Montour: its mean congestion discount grew 92%, deepened in all nine monthly comparisons, and still increased 34% after extreme hours were removed. Total nodal prices rose at the same time.
California’s August Grid Held While Wholesale Energy Costs Rose
California’s grid maintained what CAISO described as comfortable reliability margins during August’s strongest demand conditions since the May launch of the Extended Day-Ahead Market. Over the same month, wholesale energy costs reached approximately $1.3 billion, roughly 35% above August 2025.
New York Contracted 950 MW of Batteries Across Eight Projects
New York awarded contracts for 950 MW of bulk battery storage on September 23, selecting eight projects from 46 proposals totaling approximately 6 GW. The winners range from Chautauqua County to the Bronx and Long Island, with storage durations between four and eight hours.
California’s Home Batteries Delivered a Reported 580 MW
Sunrun and Tesla reported 580 MW of peak power from household batteries during California's September 9 evening heat. Regional demand, generation and prices show the operating setting for two programs that coordinated stored energy from participating homes.
PJM Called Emergency Demand Response During Maintenance Season
Ask the Grid reconstructs September 17 using preliminary hourly load, same-day outage outlooks and verified real-time prices. Planned and maintenance work accounted for 71% of the outage outlook; the highest prices arrived two hours after the served-load peak.
PJM Proposes Ride-Through Rules After a 3.8 GW Load Transfer
The preliminary event record explains the difference between keeping a data center powered and keeping the grid balanced—and why PJM proposed voltage, frequency and recovery requirements.
Texas Approved 765-kV Lines Into the Permian. Load Growth Just Slowed.
Ask the Grid compared January-August operating hours across eight years: Far West demand growth fell from 13.8 percent to 1.0 percent, its peak hour dropped 7.2 percent in the warmest period of the series, and the West load zone's premium over the North hub went from $9.90 to $0.32. ERCOT's own nighttime reliability limit describes a different condition.
North Plains Connector Advances Toward Linking Two Divided Power Markets
Ask the Grid measured the corridor the North Plains Connector would serve: an hourly price correlation of 0.10 between Colstrip and Glendive against 0.31 or higher for every same-side pair tested, an average spread that changes direction twice a day, 2,290 hours with one end below zero while the other was above it, and a December day that ran from $836/MWh to negative $15 inside one state.
ERCOT’s Record Summer Extended Through the Night
A six-week analysis of EIA hourly data shows why sustained energy requirements and overnight demand add to Texas’s peak-day story.
ERCOT's Highest August Load Wasn't Its Tightest Day
Ask the Grid compared load, committed-capacity headroom, reserve deployment, system lambda, storage output and nodal prices across ERCOT's hottest August operating days.
DOE Is Keeping Three PJM Units Open for Two Different Reliability Problems
Eddystone and Wagner are covered by the same emergency law, but their operating instructions, congestion exposure and long-term pathways show why they are not one reliability story.
SPP Won Approval to Reconfigure Existing Lines for Economic Benefits
Federal regulators approved SPP’s process for economic topology reconfiguration on August 19. It gives the operator and market participants a route to propose changes in how existing transmission equipment is connected, with the aim of relieving congestion and lowering market production costs.
SPP's Grid Emergency Looked Very Different East and West
DOE's July 26 order gave SPP emergency authority over 4.85 GW of named generation and last-resort backup power at large loads. The market data shows where the system was actually tight, what supplied peak demand, and what the public record still does not establish.
Texas Pauses Data-Center Approvals for a Broader State Audit
Texas ordered an audit of data centers advancing through interconnection before additional approvals could proceed. ERCOT's preliminary large-load screen and source-backed campus examples show why power commitments, project phases and local resource needs shape the implementation.
California's Batteries Are Reshaping the Solar Day
CAISO's average May battery response grew from about 1.6 GW of midday charging and 2.3 GW of evening discharge in 2023 to 7.3 GW and 8.9 GW in 2026. Different price conditions at two output highs show why timing and location shape storage's market value.
Goldman's RWE Deal Pairs a Distributed Fleet With a 1.2 GW Pipeline
Goldman Sachs Alternatives agreed to acquire RWE's U.S. distributed-generation business. Analysis of 49 predecessor small-project plants shows the geographic and operating task behind the announced fleet and its 1.2 GW development pipeline.
PJM's Higher Power Prices Raise the Stakes of Governance Reform
PJM's January–July 2026 day-ahead price averaged $72.26/MWh, above the same period in 2022 despite a lower Henry Hub gas benchmark. Market data on prices, outages and a sudden large-load transfer frame the July debate over board authority, stakeholder votes and the states' role.
Texas's Battery Buildout Split Between Incumbents and Entrants
An asset-level view of the two operator cohorts reshaping ERCOT batteries, from ENGIE's expanding fleet and 17 first-time platforms to the 2026 projects now operating or still in the queue.
The Day PJM Broke Its Demand Record
PJM's preliminary unrestricted demand reached 168,158 MW on July 2. Operating records show demand response, increased oil generation, targeted emergency actions and permit relief supporting reliability through the event.
PJM’s Capacity Price Fell While Its Reserve Shortfall Grew
PJM’s July 14 capacity auction produced a lower price and a larger reserve shortfall. The 2028/2029 delivery-year price cleared at the $325/MW-day cap, down 2.5% from the previous auction, while committed capacity finished 6,831.3 MW below the regional reliability requirement.
The Batteries Winning ERCOT's New Market
An ERCOT battery comparison built from public disclosures shows a wide spread in reconstructed revenue, two distinct market-product strategies and the importance of concentrated high-revenue days. The ranking consistently groups units by settlement point over the eligible operating window.
New York's Grid Meets the Heat
One of the most intense heat waves in more than a decade drove New York demand to within 8 percent of its all-time record. The grid operator forecast the peak almost exactly, the New York City price spiked to nearly $1,847 a megawatt-hour, and the city's utility cut voltage to 400,000 customers to keep the lights on. A briefing from inside the event.
The April 2025 ERCOT Price Spike
No heat, no freeze, no outage declared, and load barely above 45 gigawatts. For about ninety minutes before dawn the ERCOT real-time price spiked nearly seventyfold and collapsed, set not by a crisis but by a thin maintenance calendar, a wind forecast that missed, and a windless hour before the sun came up. Walk the spike interval by interval.
Hurricane Beryl: The 2024 Houston Blackout
Hurricane Beryl was the inverse of a heat wave: one city's demand collapsed, the price fell through the floor, and the lights stayed off for nine days into a 106-degree heat index that killed mostly the old. Walk the outage hour by hour, then read what the grid cannot show you.
The 2024 Solar Eclipse and the Texas Grid
The April 2024 eclipse cut ERCOT solar output by more than 90 percent in the span of a single hour, a supply shock the size of a small country's grid, perfectly predictable, planned for a week ahead, and absorbed without an emergency. Watch the mirror image of solar collapsing and gas rising on celestial time.
Winter Storm Uri: The 2021 Texas Grid Collapse
Winter Storm Uri drove ERCOT demand to an all-time winter peak while more than a thousand generating units froze offline. Walk the four days that nearly took the grid down, in the live data that recorded every hour of it.