ERCOT Regulatory Bullish
Texas asked data centers for $50,000 a megawatt, then settled for a flat $100,000
The PUCT adopted its large load interconnection rule Friday and threw out the non-refundable $50,000 per MW fee it floated in March, replacing the tiered study deposits with one flat $100,000 charge no matter how big the load is. It also stretched the missed-milestone window from six months to 24. That was the one real toll gate on the 474 GW queue, and it just got a lot cheaper to stand in line.
Utility Dive · Sep 21, 2026
NYISO Regulatory Bearish
$3.26 billion and 90 miles of cable to get power onto Long Island
The New York PSC signed off on Propel NY Energy, the underground 138 kV and 345 kV build from NYPA and New York Transco linking Long Island to the rest of the state. Opponents argued the case died with the offshore wind cancellations. The commission said the 9 GW target is still on the books. Downstate is the expensive half of NYISO, and anything that moves more megawatts into Zones J and K takes the edge off congestion, assuming it lands on schedule in 2030.
Utility Dive · Sep 21, 2026
NAT GAS Bearish
March 2027 made a new low, and winter hasn't even started
October held its 50-day at $2.849 Monday, but that's a contract defending itself into rollover and nothing more. November lost $3.00 and March 2027 printed $2.772, a fresh low, with Europe at 69% full against an 85% norm and Hormuz still restricting tankers. Production ran 113.8 Bcf a day, rigs sit at 134, and EIA has end-October storage near 3,985 Bcf. Two light builds don't fix a balance that heavy, and an El Niño winter forecast is what the back of the curve is actually trading.
FXEmpire · Sep 21, 2026
Regulatory Bearish
A Trump appointee just put $7 billion of rooftop solar money back on the table
Judge Mary McElroy in Rhode Island vacated EPA's termination of Solar for All, ruling the One Big Beautiful Bill Act never turned already-obligated grants into money the agency could claw back. The funds were obligated in September 2024 and run five years. It's appealable, but if the money moves it puts distributed solar in front of low-income load across a lot of states, and that load is the same load retail suppliers serve.
Utility Dive · Sep 21, 2026
NAT GAS Neutral
Europe is 16 points short on storage, and that's the only thing holding this market up
October settled at $2.912 Friday on short covering and nothing more. Commodity Weather Group turned cooler for September 23 through October 2, Baker Hughes pushed the gas rig count to 134, and Lower 48 output is running 113.8 Bcf a day against end-October inventories projected at 3,985 Bcf. The one real bid left is Europe, 69% full against an 85% norm with Hormuz still choking Qatari cargoes.
FXEmpire · Sep 20, 2026
NAT GAS Bearish
The 44 Bcf print beat the estimate, and the weather took it back the next morning
Thursday's injection landed at 44 Bcf against a 48 Bcf estimate and a 74 Bcf five-year norm. By Friday morning October gas was down 1.83% to $2.848 and back under the 50-day, because the forecast turned cooler across the South and Southeast through October 1. Feedgas slipped to 18.7 Bcf a day that same week, so both demand pillars cracked at once.
FXEmpire · Sep 18, 2026
PJM Regulatory Neutral
Microsoft filed a notice of appeal in Virginia without actually appealing yet
The Virginia SCC ordered Dominion in July to directly assign substation and direct-connect transmission costs to large loads through a mandatory contribution in aid of construction. Microsoft filed an Aug. 28 notice with the state Supreme Court that preserves its right to challenge, and it has until late November to actually file one. Dominion's compliant policy lands in a follow-on docket in October.
Utility Dive · Sep 18, 2026
NAT GAS Bearish
The widow-maker just printed a record low, and that tells you what traders think of winter
October gas slipped 1.5 cents to $2.876 as daily LNG feedgas fell to a three-week low of 17.5 Bcf a day on Cameron maintenance, with Cove Point going down next. Lower 48 output is running 113.1 Bcf a day in September, above August's record. The March over April 2027 spread collapsed to about 11 cents, a record low, which is the market saying it doesn't expect to run short this winter.
Reuters / Business Recorder · Sep 18, 2026
NAT GAS Bullish
44 Bcf against a 74 Bcf norm, and the surplus is shrinking fast
EIA put the week-ended Sept. 11 injection at 44 Bcf, well under the 74 Bcf five-year average and the 87 Bcf build a year ago. Working gas sits at 3,298 Bcf, now 122 Bcf below last year and only 118 Bcf over the five-year average. South Central actually pulled 5 Bcf out, with salt down 24% on the year. September heat is doing to storage what the curve hasn't priced.
Oil & Gas 360 · Sep 17, 2026
PJM Bullish
PJM called emergency demand response in September, which isn't supposed to happen
PJM activated Pre-Emergency and Emergency Demand Response the afternoon of Sept. 17 with load forecast near 132,000 MW and roughly 36,000 MW of generation already in outage. DOE granted an emergency order through Sept. 18 that relaxes environmental permit limits and lets PJM push data centers onto backup generation if it needs to. Exports to hotter systems south and west were set to be curtailed. Outage season just started and the margin is already thin.
PJM Inside Lines · Sep 17, 2026
ERCOT Bearish
Meta and Apex are up to 1.2 GW, and the newest 144 MW lands in Gonzales County
Apex and Meta signed a PPA for the 144-MW Starling Solar project, taking their joint portfolio across seven projects to 1.2 GW. ERCOT's August queue report has Starling through security screening and into full interconnection study with a January 2028 commercial date. Hyperscaler money keeps pulling Texas solar out of the queue and onto the system, and every block of it competes into the same afternoon.
Utility Dive · Sep 17, 2026
Regulatory Neutral
417-3 in the House, and big loads would pay their own incremental cost
The Ratepayer Protection Act cleared the House Wednesday and would make states consider standards for loads above 100 MW, covering full incremental generation, transmission and distribution cost, financial assurances and exit fees. ClearView calls it behind the curve since only 13 states lack a large-load tariff, and says the Senate won't move it before the midterms. The interesting part is generation cost, because bring-your-own-capacity adds years to a data center build.
Utility Dive · Sep 17, 2026
Regulatory Neutral
MISO got through the heat, then its monitor said the repricing cost it something
MISO made it through one of its hottest summers without shedding load, but the Independent Market Monitor told the board that repricing several hours of a max gen emergency eroded faith in the market. That's the whole problem with after-the-fact repricing. The scarcity print is the signal that pulls resources in, and if operators can walk it back, nobody prices the risk the same way next time.
RTO Insider · Sep 17, 2026
ERCOT Bearish
Jupiter Power just closed $1.4 billion on 3,600 MWh, and most of it lands in Texas
Four transactions between April and July fund ten battery projects totaling 1,500 MW and 3,600 MWh across Texas and Michigan, pushing the developer past $3 billion raised. ERCOT's installed battery fleet already hit roughly 15 GW and 24.6 GWh in early 2026, up from 7.8 GW a year earlier. Every block of storage that clears construction is another set of scarcity hours that doesn't print.
pv magazine USA · Sep 16, 2026
Bearish
Utilities are starting to treat idle school buses as a demand resource
Districts that put electric buses into utility grid programs can claw back thousands of dollars per bus against the sticker price. The capacity per unit is small, but the buses sit parked on a predictable schedule, right on the distribution circuits where congestion actually shows up. Flexibility that turns up at the peak is capacity nobody has to buy from a generator.
Utility Dive · Sep 16, 2026
ISO-NE Regulatory Bearish
New England sets the bar at 50 MW: bring your own new capacity
ISO-NE filled in the detail on its answer to FERC's large load show-cause order in EL26-72, and the core of it is a bring-your-own-new-capacity obligation for anything 50 MW and up. It also restarted Order 1920 compliance work at the NEPOOL Transmission Committee. New England has few data centers today, which is exactly why the ISO can set the threshold this low. Load that shows up with its own megawatts doesn't bid against your book in the capacity auction.
RTO Insider · Sep 16, 2026
NYISO PJM Regulatory Neutral
The deregulated states are being told to start planning again
Clean Air Task Force argues market prices in restructured regions are too near-term to finance nuclear, offshore wind and long-duration storage, and wants states running scenario assessments and their own procurements on top of the market. Illinois is doing it live under the grid affordability act that took effect in June. New York's offshore wind cancellations are the cautionary tale. Nobody's proposing a return to vertical integration, but more state procurement means more contracted supply outside the energy stack.
Utility Dive · Sep 16, 2026
Regulatory Neutral
Rates are up 38% since 2020, and now the bond analysts are watching
S&P Global calls high utility bills relative to household income a simmering risk for municipal credit, not yet a rating action. The logic is simple: if buyers and businesses stop moving to expensive-power metros, the tax base that funds infrastructure shrinks. Affordability is already a factor in how S&P rates electric and water utilities. That pressure is what pushes regulators toward curtailment rules and large-load tariffs rather than socialized costs.
Utility Dive · Sep 16, 2026
ERCOT Bearish
Used EV batteries are landing in ERCOT at 40% under a new battery
B2U's 28-MWh Bexar Martinez site in CPS Energy territory is its second Texas project built entirely from repurposed car batteries, more than 700 of them. At roughly 10 MW it qualifies for ERCOT's faster small generator path, and the company says another 50 MWh lands in the next six months against a pipeline over 1,000 MWh. Both Texas sites are running merchant. Installed cost runs as much as 40% below a conventional build, which is how more megawatts show up to shave the same evening peak.
Utility Dive · Sep 15, 2026
NAT GAS Neutral
Europe is bidding for cargoes and 114.4 Bcf a day keeps saying no
Dutch TTF jumped past 83 euros with European storage 68% full against an 84% five-year average, and LNG feedgas answered at 19.9 Bcf a day. October gas still can't take out $3. Lower 48 production printed 114.4 Bcf a day, up 5.2% on the year, and Baker Hughes put the gas rig count back to 132. Every molecule that ships out skips domestic storage, but inventories are still running 4.8% over the five-year average.
FXEmpire · Sep 15, 2026
PJM Regulatory Bullish
PJM's own planning standard breaks by 2030 in every scenario that includes data centers
A Pennsylvania PUC study puts PJM's 2030 loss-of-load expectation at 0.59 in the base case and 13.20 in the high-load, low-supply case, against a target of 0.1. That worst case means more than 13 days a year with load-shed events. Only the no-new-data-centers run clears the criterion, and nobody is forecasting that. Scarcity this deep doesn't stay in a report. It shows up in capacity clears and forward energy.
Utility Dive · Sep 15, 2026
Regulatory Bearish
It's final: the carbon rule is gone, and EPA wants the rest of them too
EPA finalized the repeal of most of the 2024 Carbon Pollution Standards Monday and proposed rescinding every remaining greenhouse gas standard for the power sector, claiming no Clean Air Act authority to regulate them. NRECA says co-ops are lining up $29 billion and 20 GW of new gas. Attorneys general are already drafting suits. Until a court says otherwise, the compliance cost baked into fossil dispatch just came out.
Utility Dive · Sep 15, 2026
ISO-NE Regulatory Bearish
FERC just trimmed what New England pays for day-ahead ancillary services
FERC signed off on a set of changes to ISO-NE's day-ahead ancillary services market, the DASI design that's been running since March 2025 and clearing higher than anyone wanted. The stated point is lower total cost to consumers. Generators including NEPGA and FirstLight fought pieces of it. For a New England REP, this is a line item on the bill that gets smaller.
RTO Insider · Sep 15, 2026
NAT GAS Bullish
Corpus Christi finished its seventh train and is now the second-biggest export plant in the country
Cheniere took the last CCL Stage 3 train on August 28, pushing the Corpus Christi terminal to 3.1 Bcf/d nominal and 3.9 Bcf/d peak, second only to Sabine Pass. Two more trains land in 2028. Feedgas has been printing near 19.6 Bcf a day and this is a permanent piece of why. Every train that comes online is standing demand that doesn't care what the weather does.
EIA · Sep 15, 2026