Who Pays for the Watts: AI Data Centers, a Capacity Auction Pinned at Its Cap, and the $6.3 Billion Question - August 7, 2026

Who Pays for the Watts: AI Data Centers, a Capacity Auction Pinned at Its Cap, and the $6.3 Billion Question The largest grid operator in America just held a capacity auction that cleared at exactly its administrative price cap of $325 per megawatt-day, and still came up 6,831 megawatts short of its own reliability standard. PJM's Independent Market Monitor attributes roughly $6.3 billion of the $16.4 billion total to data centers, much of it reserved for speculative load that may never be...