PJM Dumps Wind and Solar in New Interconnection Queue

Wind and solar should "learn to code"

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For years, the power sector has been running on a vibes-based fiction, one that said we could build a grid around intermittent resources and figure out reliability later.

When demand was flat and reserve margins were hefty, this was a convincing narrative for many, but the need for reliable power has a way of correcting markets that drift too far from physical reality.

Nowhere is that correction more visible than in the PJM Interconnection queue.

Results in the first round of PJM’s reformed interconnection process are devastating for wind and solar, and the idea that these resources can reliably serve the electricity grid. By a wide margin, natural gas is now leading the queue and is beating wind and solar combined.

Alongside storage and nuclear, this underscores a simple truth: when reliability matters, markets gravitate toward firm, dispatchable resources—even when federal subsidies and state wind and solar mandates stack the deck against them.

And thanks in large part to the explosive growth of data centers, reliability matters again, and that means wind and solar should learn to code.

The Scope of the Devastation

The PJM interconnection queue is having a “Come to Jesus” moment. And when it comes to the electricity industry, reliable and dispatchable power is the savior.

After years of being a parking lot for intermittent wind and solar projects, the reformed interconnection queue process has resulted in a queue that is heavily skewed toward “firming” resources.

As you can see, natural gas is leading the pack at 105,797 megawatts (MW), which by itself beats out wind and solar combined by nearly 4 to 1.

When coupling storage and nuclear in the mix—which are the next top resources in the queue and also meant to “firm” the grid for massive load growth expectations—that ratio jumps to nearly 7 to 1.

This is night and day from a mere few years ago, when intermittent projects made up the vast majority of interconnection queue submissions.

Compared to 2023, wind and solar project submissions are down 89 percent and 90 percent, respectively, while natural gas is up 1,810 percent, and nuclear went from 0 to 17,906 MW.

This suggests what many of us have known all along: you can’t power a grid on hopes and wishes, and that’s exactly what wind and solar represent.

Surprisingly, even nuclear alone beats out standalone solar and wind separately. The nuclear total includes a fusion reactor that we will believe when we see it, but the same idea holds—PJM is in desperate need of reliable generation to meet massive load growth projections in the near future and to alleviate soaring capacity prices. As a result, it’s turning to resources that can actually achieve this end.

Soaring Demand and Capacity Prices

Say what you want about data centers, but the change-up in PJM is largely due to load growth expectations driven by energy-intensive industries.

And this was a much-needed correction. The fact that markets are having trouble meeting this demand without burdening residential ratepayers with higher bills is more of a testament against the way we’ve been operating the grid for the past three decades, rather than a dig on data centers themselves. Historically, large-load users helped keep costs low.

This is a challenge that needs to be met, but it’s important to remember why it’s a challenge in the first place.

After years of flat demand that allowed complacency to take over energy policy and dwindle the sizable dispatchable reserve margin on the grid, we’re now struggling to meet load growth expectations today that from the 1950s to early 2000s we managed just fine. Indeed, data centers and other large-load users have placed reliability back where it needs to be: at the top of the priority list.

PJM is finding out why it’s so important. Incoming data centers and other large-load industries need power 24/7. At the same time, the system has spent years (and is still) retiring dispatchable capacity and replacing it with resources that have limited contribution during peak conditions.

In a capacity market, when a gap between reliable generators and load growth becomes visible, prices increase. Therefore, rising capacity prices in PJM aren’t a mystery. They’re the direct result of less dispatchable supply, more inflexible demand, and resource additions that don’t carry equivalent reliability value.

The market isn’t confused. It’s reacting exactly the way it’s supposed to, despite market distortions that heavily favor intermittent, weather-based resources. This goes to show just how important thermal and dispatchable capacity is—that despite decades of unfavorable policies and regulations, they are still standing and refusing to go away.

The opposite is true for wind and solar. Just as soon as you level the playing field and load growth demands reliable generation, they fold under the pressure.

And there’s a very clear reason for this.

Effective Load Carrying Capacities

The market is responding to the fact that wind and solar experience declines in their capacity value as more MWs are added to the grid.

Perhaps there is room for wind and solar to be part of the energy mix at very low penetrations (which we are skeptical of), but certainly not for providing the bulk of power production on the grid. The reason is simple physics and mathematics, highlighted by decreasing marginal capacity values.

We highlighted the diminishing returns of wind and solar in a pervious piece, More is Less with Wind and Solar.

Wind and solar capacity values fall as more of these resources are added to the grid because their output patterns are often correlated—the sun sets over an entire continent or concentrated wind turbines experience a wind drought—and they are non-dispatchable. As a result, adding more of the same variable resource reaches a point where the resource does not meaningfully contribute to reliability.

…This is reflected by diminishing capacity values for wind and solar in several major regional transmission operators (RTOs) in the country, which we detail below.

This is the case in every RTO in the country.

Falling capacity accreditation for wind and solar means these resources are increasingly unable to capture high capacity prices in capacity auctions. This is not a bug; it is a feature of how the capacity markets should work, rewarding resources with high reliability values while less reliable resources miss out on the action.

Conclusion

The truth is that the change in the interconnection queue in PJM is a symptom of a greater problem and an admission that the RTO was not prepared to handle surging load growth after years of flat demand and political pressure to prioritize intermittent generators over coal, natural gas, and nuclear generators.

After years of misplaced priorities and politicians being asleep at the wheel, market participants are now playing catch-up all at once, rushing to build more reliable natural gas, nuclear, and battery storage, and leaving wind and solar on the sidelines.

GE Vernova gas turbine backlog hits 100 GW as prices rise. Surging demand for reliable power creates a big need for natural gas.

GE Vernova’s gas turbine backlog reached 100 GW in the first quarter, up sharply from 83 GW at the end of 2025. Parks said the company shipped 25 gas turbines in the quarter, a 32% increase from the first quarter of 2025, with pricing rising faster than the inflation rate.

“We continue to be in that 10% to 20% growth in price on new bidding and winning activity today relative to where we were in the backlog in the fourth quarter of last year,” Strazik said later on the Wednesday call. “The dollar-per-kilowatt growth is going to be very healthy in the second quarter of this year.”

MISO capacity prices fall as new supply outpaces demand growth

Capacity prices fell sharply in the summer season — from $666.50/MW-day in all regions to $424.30/MW-day in MISO’s North and Central regions, $384.10/MW-day in Arkansas and Mississippi and $412.10/MW-day in Louisiana and Texas.