On September 14, 2026, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (“PUC”) released the results of an independent study on load growth in PJM. The study warned that if we stay on the present course, Pennsylvania can expect the grid under PJM management to fail to meet its reliability standards as early as 2027. At the same time energy generation will be at a premium to satisfy the new data centers and AI energy sucks, the PUC has engaged in a concerted effort to take renewable energy off the table. The PUC continues to severely debilitate the very legislation that is intended to bolster local, on-system generation that could otherwise be used to stave off Pennsylvania’s anticipated electricity failures.
The Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act (“AEPS Act”) was enacted in 2004 to encourage small-scale energy production – predominantly solar. In 2019, a Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruling allowed developers to build projects without native load, thus incentivizing the development of many more megawatts of renewable energy onto the grid. Solar projects inject electricity directly into the distribution system and do not require upgrades to PJM’s transmission infrastructure. The renewable energy allowed by the legislature and incentivized by Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court, is delivered directly into the local communities where it is needed to combat expected increased usages by AI and Data Centers.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, the PUC has thwarted new local energy creation into the Pennsylvania market. This is particularly true for larger solar installations, that in the short term, absent the headwinds of recent PUC rate decisions, could be connected and producing substantial energy for Pennsylvania. The uncertainty that the PUC’s recent decisions have caused has stalled the pipeline of renewable energy projects that could otherwise be online by next summer – in time to save the at-risk electric grid.
The recently released report runs contrary to the PUC’s efforts to quash solar projects. The unprecedented deficits in generation could be solved, if the PUC embraced rather than hindered the creation of solar energy. Barring an about face from the Pennsylvania PUC, Pennsylvanians can expect that the PUC study will come to fruition and our grid reliability will be at risk starting as early as 2027. With Solar providing an easy save for this dilemma, Pennsylvanians are left to wonder, what is the PUC reasoning for stalling solar.