PJM's own market monitor has put a figure on what data center load has cost everyone else in the capacity market so far: $29.4 billion. Monitoring Analytics, the independent monitor led by Joseph Bowring, published its State of the Market report for the first nine months of 2026 on 12 November, and the introduction reads more like a charge sheet than a market summary.
The monitor calls the increase irreversible and says more costs are coming. In its view the last four capacity auctions, for the delivery years 2025/2026 to 2028/2029, did not produce competitive results, mainly because forecast data center demand was counted in them.
December Is The Next Bill
The next Base Residual Auction, for 2029/2030, is due in December. PJM's reliability backstop filing has slipped until after that auction, so most of the forecast data center load stays in it. The monitor expects the auction to clear at the maximum price and to add another $5 billion to $10 billion of data center related costs. It also objects that the 2026 load forecast behind the auction still contains data centers that have been cancelled or are unlikely to reach the planned demand by the target date.
The shortfall against PJM's reliability requirement is growing, according to the report: 208.7 MW in the 2026/2027 auction, 6,516.6 MW in 2027/2028 and 6,831.3 MW in 2028/2029.
On wholesale prices the monitor gives this split. The total cost of wholesale power averaged $111.61 per MWh in January to September 2026, up from $79.19 a year earlier. Without data center load in the capacity market it would have been $101.66, so the monitor attributes $9.95 per MWh, or 9.8 percent, to that load alone, before any effect on energy or transmission costs.
A Good Year To Own A Peaker
The same report shows what higher prices did to the economics of new plant. Theoretical energy market net revenues in the first nine months rose 105 percent for a new combustion turbine, 76 percent for a new combined cycle and 313 percent for a new diesel unit, compared with the same period of 2025. Generation from oil-fired units rose 13.7 percent, from gas units 2.5 percent. Average hourly load was up 3.4 percent.
Bring Your Own Generation
Bowring's remedy is to take forecast data center load out of the next auctions. Large new loads would be served through bilateral contracts with generators, either under what the monitor calls bring-your-own-new-generation (BYONG) contracts or through a separate reliability backstop auction. Data centers that bring new generation, located and timed to match their load profile, would get a fast-track interconnection; the others would wait in a queue until there is capacity to serve them. PJM, the monitor says, should postpone the December auction until this is in place.
PJM does not accept the blame. Spokesman Jeffrey Shields told Briefs that the grid operator fundamentally disagrees that it can rein in these costs, since states and their utilities decide where data centers connect, and pointed to PJM's own proposal that states assign large-load costs back to those customers. We covered the shrinking backstop procurement earlier this month.
What BYONG Would Change On Site
If the monitor's idea wins, the generation question moves to the start of a data center project instead of being left to the utility. A developer would arrive at interconnection with a plant or a contract already in hand, sized and timed to the campus. For many that means on-site engines or turbines, permitted and cooled for continuous duty rather than for the few hours a year a backup set runs. Those are different machines to specify, and the difference shows up first in the site layout.
Sources: Monitoring Analytics (2026 Q3 State of the Market Report for PJM, Section 1), Briefs
