PJM, a 220 Mile Electric Power Superhighway, and Your Electric Bill

(Backed by U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa. and Team Pennsylvania, a public-private partnership that is co-chaired by Gov. Josh Shapiro.)

All 13 states (plus D.C.) in the PJM Interconnection grid are experiencing higher electricity costs —or are at risk of significant increases—partly driven by the massive power demand and infrastructure needs of Northern Virginia's data centers. Because PJM operates as a regional grid, costs for new transmission lines and generation capacity required for these data centers are spread across the entire territory.

According to Blake Crosley of Introl.com PJM Interconnection's capacity auction cleared at $329.17 per megawatt-day for the 2026-2027 delivery year, a price that would have seemed fictional two years earlier.1 In the 2024-2025 auction, generators accepted $28.92/MW-day to keep the lights on for 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C.2 The roughly tenfold increase landed squarely on ratepayers, and data center demand drove 63% of it.3 Cumulative costs through 2033 could reach $100 billion to $163 billion, depending on whether price caps hold.45 The average family in PJM territory faces an estimated $70-per-month increase by 2028.

Key Impacts on the PJM Region:

Regional Cost Allocation: Data center transmission expansion costs are often shared regionally, not just within Virginia, causing consumers in other states to share the burden.

Surging Capacity Prices: Data centers have driven up capacity market prices (the cost to ensure enough power exists for peak days), with one 2025 auction showing a massive, nearly 1,000% increase over previous years.

If this isn’t horrifying enough, there is now a proposed electric super highway coming our way…

Electric power ‘superhighway’ proposed to cut across 200 miles of southwestern and Central Pa. The extra-high voltage transmission line would lead from W.Va. to an emerging ‘data center alley’ in Eastern Pa. Laura Legere, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Mar 22, 2026

Two of the country’s biggest electric power companies are planning to build an extra-high voltage transmission “superhighway” across 10 counties in southwestern and central Pennsylvania, in what would be one of the largest new electric transmission projects ever built in the commonwealth.

NextEra Energy and Exelon Corp. have teamed up to propose the 765-kilovolt transmission line to run 220 miles from Marshall County, W.Va., to Perry County, Pa. — traversing Greene, Fayette, Westmoreland, Indiana, Cambria, Blair, Huntingdon, Mifflin and Juniata counties in between.

The project is estimated to cost $1.7 billion and to be placed in service in 2031.

The proposal is the latest mega-project tied to the development of data centers for artificial intelligence in Pennsylvania: One of the transmission line’s primary goals would be to help satisfy the expected electricity demand for new computing power in the eastern half of the state that could put dangerous strain on the grid by 2032.

Laura Legere: Shopping for energy has cost Pa. residents billions, consumer advocates say. It would require securing over 5,400 acres of land as it cuts a 200-foot-wide corridor through woods, mountains and fields along its length, most of which would not be located along the path of existing utility rights-of-way, according to an analysis by PJM Interconnection.

Darryl Lawrence, Pennsylvania’s Consumer Advocate, said the scale would be unprecedented.

“We’ve never really had a line this long, traversing this many miles of Pennsylvania,” he said, and never at such high voltage. The top voltage transmission line in Pennsylvania is currently 500 kV.

The proposal took a major step forward last month, when the board of managers for PJM Interconnection endorsed it as part of a suite of projects intended to reinforce the reliability of the Mid-Atlantic electric grid that serves 67 million people across 13 states.

Long-term planning had identified points of possible future failure on the grid and PJM opened a window for proposals to address them.

The proposed transmission line would address weak points in the PPL Electric utility territory in eastern Pennsylvania that PJM refers to as an emerging “data center alley” with surging new demand forecast without equivalent new generation.

The line would enable power to be imported into Pennsylvania from plants in Ohio, Illinois and other states to the west and south.

Laura Legere: Regional electric grid withstands strain of freezing weather, so far the cancellation and delay of major planned wind projects off the coast of New Jersey, which have seen key approvals frozen or revoked by the Trump administration, are also reason for the need for the proposed line, PJM said.

NextEra and Exelon said that advancing the project is “a key step in addressing reliability risks and ensuring long-term grid stability.”

Expanding high-voltage “backbone” transmission infrastructure into Pennsylvania would deliver economic benefits, they said, by enabling both large electricity users and generators to connect to the grid and by improving customers’ access to lower-cost power, especially during extreme weather events.

Two chimneys, one billowing steam, rise above the Mitchell Power Plant, about 10 miles south of Moundsville, W.Va., on Wednesday, March 18, 2026.(Giuseppe LoPiccolo/Post-Gazette) “PJM Board's decision reflects their determination that these reliability challenges cannot be solved with small or localized upgrades alone — extraordinary demand growth requires a suite of solutions,” they said.

Concerns and support. PJM’s endorsement came despite recommendations against it from Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission and Office of Consumer Advocate, both of which raised concerns about the selection process.

The project “has the potential to become the ‘poster child’ for overbuilding new transmission infrastructure and failure to solve reliability needs with potentially less expensive ... options,” Deputy Consumer Advocate Melanie Joy El Atieh wrote to PJM in late January.

“The costs of these projects, of course, will be paid for by electricity consumers,” she wrote, noting that PJM’s broader 2025 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan, which includes the Pennsylvania project, has a price tag of $11.8 billion and residential customers would pay for about $9 billion of it.

The five commissioners on the Public Utility Commission, who will have to review the project in Pennsylvania, urged PJM to take more time “to conduct an exhaustive evaluation of all possible solutions,” saying its selection process “may have led to insufficient competition” including from alternatives “that were not strictly reliant upon transmission lines.”

“Before committing to this major backbone transmission project,” they suggested PJM look at the possibility of new local power generation sources meeting the same needs, or breaking the project into phases.

Mr. Lawrence, the Consumer Advocate, said a consensus is quickly building — from the White House, state governors, data center developers and major AI companies — that data centers should match their power needs with new generation that they pay to build nearby, and should protect other utility ratepayers from having to bear the costs.

“If that happens, this line’s very likely not needed,” he said. “If [new generation] is going to come from somewhere closer to where the data center is — which would be, in our view of the world, the best possible outcome — maybe we don't need to build billions of dollars of transmission lines and potentially disrupt a lot of very scenic Pennsylvania property.”

The project’s backers include U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa. and Team Pennsylvania, a public-private partnership that is co-chaired by Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro.

In a December press release from NextEra and Exelon, Mr. McCormick said that by strengthening power infrastructure, “we're ensuring Pennsylvanians can seize this moment” and “lead the energy and AI revolution.”

Abby Smith, Team Pennsylvania’s president and CEO, wrote to PJM in October that the line proposed by NextEra and Exelon represents “the type of long-term transmission investment needed to strengthen the grid across Pennsylvania” and position the state for “sustained growth and investment.”

On the question of cost, she said, “Although there is appropriate scrutiny on near-term transmission costs, the benefits of building a more resilient backbone system will accrue over decades.”

Mr. Shapiro’s spokeswoman Rosie Lapowsky said that the governor is “laser focused on lowering utility costs” and “recognizes that with growing demand, there may be circumstances where we need to build more transmission capacity.”

The governor has communicated with the project’s developers directly, she said, “to voice his expectation that if they are to proceed, they will respect the legal rights of local communities and landowners along the proposed route and ensure that the data centers — which the line would benefit — pay their fair share of its cost,” she said.

The Shapiro administration plans to follow the project’s progress closely to make sure it is meeting those standards, she said.

Whose backyard? Extra-high-voltage 765-kV transmission lines are relatively rare in the U.S., but are growing more common.

An existing network of them stretches from Illinois to Virginia. The proposed new line would connect to that network at a substation along the Ohio River about 7 miles southwest of Moundsville, W.Va.

NextEra and Exelon said 765-kV lines transfer two- to three-times more power than more typical 500-kV lines while reducing transmission losses by 50%, with better resilience and fewer towers.

The companies said the “bi-directional 765-kV superhighway” would facilitate the flow of about 7 gigawatts of power across the region.

The line’s exact path has not been determined and will depend on land acquisition, environmental constraints, regulatory review and community and government input.

The project calls for three segments of new transmission lines and two new substations: a 114-mile section from the existing Kammer station in Marshall County to the proposed Buttermilk Falls substation in Indiana County; a 108-mile section from there to the proposed Mountain Stone substation in Perry County; and a roughly half-mile-long 500-kV spur with two parallel lines connecting to the existing Juniata substation in Perry County. It requires nearly 1,000 towers, according to PJM’s analysis.

The project proposal also includes seven substation upgrades.

NextEra and Exelon said they are “dedicated to fostering transparent and meaningful engagement with community members throughout this process” and plan to conduct open houses, surveys and meetings as it progresses.

They have set up a project website for updates at kammerjuniatatransmission.com.

“The objective is to minimize impacts on landowners and the broader community as this critical transmission project is advanced,” they said.

Although PJM endorsed the project, it does not review or approve the siting of transmission lines. Those approvals are handled by utility and environmental regulators in the states where they are built.

The Office of Consumer Advocate and other commenters warned PJM that it was significantly underestimating the challenge of getting such a power line built — and therefore underestimating its cost and timeline.

PJM scored the project as facing a “medium-high” risk in its efforts to acquire the needed land along its corridor, based on assumptions that the largely rural project would face less opposition than ones proposed in more populated areas.

But Mr. Lawrence said, “a line like this, especially with the greenfield element, I would estimate is going to draw a huge amount of opposition in Pennsylvania.”

Infrastructure projects “now face robust public scrutiny in both rural and more densely populated communities,” the Nature Conservancy cautioned PJM, and “legal challenges, protracted proceedings, and a litany of other issues are sure to emerge” with “one of the largest new transmission projects in Pennsylvania in recent memory.”

The environmental nonprofit said the line as proposed “would likely create significant impacts to critical climate migration corridors in Pennsylvania that will be difficult to offset.” Maximizing co-location with existing utility lines, transportation routes or degraded lands could reduce those habitat impacts — as well as costs and public opposition, it said.

During a January call with investment analysts, NextEra leaders were asked about their confidence in the project moving forward given the concerns about cost and need raised by Pennsylvania utility watchdogs.

They answered that they are listening to the Office of Consumer Advocate and all other stakeholders, and their “confidence continues to be high.”

The project’s developers are well aware of the bruising opposition that large transmission projects face: NextEra spent more than $20 million funding such an opposition campaign in Maine to block the construction of a 145-mile transmission line for transporting hydropower from Quebec to the New England electric grid that would compete with power plants NextEra owns there.

Ultimately, a Maine voter referendum that rejected the power line was overturned in court and the New England transmission line went into service in January.

It was more than three years behind schedule and $500 million over its initial budget. Utility ratepayers in New England will shoulder the costs.

First Published: March 22, 2026, 4:00 a.m.

Updated: March 24, 2026, 4:54 p.m.