PJM Interconnection, the grid operator serving 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C., asked federal regulators on Thursday to approve rules that would cut power to new data centers ahead of households during supply shortages, Reuters reports.
The filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission follows two consecutive capacity auctions that failed to secure enough generation, and PJM’s board projects roughly 70 GW of new large load by 2038 against roughly 15 GW of generation retired since 2022.
That might be good for nuclear SMR manufacturers. If what you’re being told is “you cannot run a high-electricity-load business and have reliable power from the grid—you need to find a large source of electricity near where you operate”, someone who can deploy a shit-ton of off-the-shelf sustained power generation at a particular location might have themselves a market.
The US is yet to produce a deployed SMR. In Canada construction of our first started in 2025 and it’s expected to come online in 2030, so probably after 2030. These timelines don’t look amazing at all for deploying power for the needs of hyperscale datacenters.