Yesterday, MDN told you that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved a “fast-track” plan from the country’s largest electric grid, PJM Interconnection (which covers all or parts of 13 states, including PA, OH, and WV) to change how the grid operator decides which new power plants can connect to the system first (see FERC…
Read More...The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) issued its latest monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook on Tuesday, the agency’s monthly best guess about where energy prices and production will go in the next 12 months. In this latest assessment, EIA said the natural gas price at the U.S. benchmark Henry Hub is expected to average $3.80 per…
Read More...In December, MDN told you the country’s largest electric grid, PJM Interconnection, which covers all or parts of 13 states, including PA, OH, and WV, proposed new changes to how it decides which new power plants can connect to the system first. The new policy *favors* adding natural gas-fired power over other types of power…
Read More...We’ve covered the ongoing spat between Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and the PJM Interconnection electricity grid that covers all or parts of 13 states plus D.C. Last Friday, we brought you an editorial from the Wall Street Journal that echos the arguments we’ve made that Shapiro himself is to blame for rising electricity prices in…
Read More...Ohio lawmakers are grappling with how to prepare the state for a surge in new power demand from AI data centers. In January, MDN told you that five Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) commissioners will decide some important guidelines about who should pay to build out new electricity sources for data centers—how much current…
Read More...Do the editors of the Wall Street Journal read Marcellus Drilling News? No, we don’t expect they actually do. Although the editorial published by the editors of the WSJ on Feb. 4 looks like it could have been written by your humble MDN editor—because it says all the things we’ve said for months about Pennsylvania…
Read More...Two weeks ago, MDN brought you the news about a mind-blowing announcement from the White House that OpenAI (ChatGPT), SoftBank, and Oracle have pledged to spend $500 billion (with a “b”) to build new data centers to support artificial intelligence (see AI, Data Centers Go Mainstream – Big Do at WH re $500B Investment). The…
Read More...If it weren’t for burning oil and coal in New England, the lights would have gone out during the recent cold snap in January. We read a startling statement from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in a post from yesterday: “…on January 21, 2025, thermal plants that burn oil provided more electricity to the…
Read More...In January, MDN outlined the issues before the Ohio Public Utilities Commission (PUC) in deciding how much money builders of data centers (like Amazon, Google, etc.) must commit if they want to connect to the local grid for power supplies (see 5 PUCO Commissioners to Decide the Future of Data Centers in Ohio). However, a…
Read More...It’s alarming! Common sense is breaking out all over. In January, we told you about a Maryland Democrat, General Assembly member C.T. Wilson from Charles County, who is attempting to get the rules changed in the Old Line State to redefine natural gas as “green” energy (see Maryland Democrat Flips, Wants to Use NatGas to…
Read More...Pennsylvania’s do-nothing Governor, Josh Shapiro, traveled to Pittsburgh yesterday to put on another shuck-and-jive all-sizzle-no-steak show. He was there to unveil what he calls his “Lightning Plan” for energy in the state. His big plan? Reintroduce and try to bully Republicans into accepting a Marcellus-killing carbon tax and onerous regulations on emissions (called PACER, see…
Read More...Yesterday, we brought you the news that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro had cut a deal (i.e., bullied) the PJM Interconnection electric grid into artificially capping electricity auctions, which will (in our opinion) eventually lead to blackouts (see PJM Grid Caves to PA Gov. Shapiro Bullying, Blackout Risk Rises). We argued that Shapiro himself is to…
Read More...Natural gas-fired electric power generation has increased in Pennsylvania since 2013 as the state has shifted toward natural gas as its main fuel source for electric power generation. In October 2024, natural gas-fired generation accounted for 57% of the electricity generated in Pennsylvania, more than twice the share in October 2013 (26%). This is thanks…
Read More...The PJM Interconnection electrical grid operator that covers Pennsylvania (along with all or parts of 12 other states and the District of Columbia) has caved to the political demands of PA Gov. Josh Shapiro to artificially cap the prices of the next capacity auction scheduled for July 2025. It means electric ratepayers won’t see as…
Read More...Did you happen to catch the news lighting up all the cable news stations yesterday about Chinese startup DeepSeek? The company launched a free AI assistant that it claims uses less data at a fraction of the cost of other AI models. By Monday, the DeepSeek assistant had overtaken U.S. rival ChatGPT in downloads from…
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