PJM 2025/2026 Capacity Base Residual Auction Results

PJM 2025/2026 Capacity Base Residual Auction Results PJM recently concluded its capacity Base Residual Auction (BRA) for Planning Year (PY) 2025/26.  The resulting prices, compared to previous recent auctions, are significantly higher.   For PY 2024/25, the RTO capacity price is $28.92/MW-day.   For PY 2025/26, the RTO capacity price cleared at $269.92/MW-day, a more than nine-fold…

Read More

Capacity Prices Rise on the Delmarva Peninsula

Capacity Prices Rise on the Delmarva Peninsula       The PJM Interconnection is the power grid operator in the Mid-Atlantic, an area that covers 65 million people in all or part of 13 states and the District of Columbia.  PJM is broken up into “control zones,” one of which is the DPL zone.  The DPL zone…

Read More

District of Columbia Solar Carve-Out

A line graph showing the growth of dc reps.

District of Columbia Solar Carve-Out Background Late last year, the DC Council passed The Local Solar Expansion Act.  It was signed into law by the Mayor on January 10, 2023.  The Bill is currently in the 30-day Congressional review process for new DC laws.  The law will go into effect on the later of March…

Read More

In the News: Jim McDonnell Talks Energy Markets and Covid-19

By Evelyn Teel Our Chief Operating Officer, Jim McDonnell, was the lead-off speaker for the first session of the Maryland Clean Energy Center’s Energy Economy Speaker Series. The topic wasState of the Sector: Impacts of Covid-19 on the Energy Economy. Jim provided a broad energy market update and then focused on the differential impact of…

Read More

Down, Down, Down: Energy Prices in the 2010s

By Evelyn Teel A previous blog post highlighted the shale gas revolution as arguably the most significant energy-related development of the previous decade (you can find the post here: https://avalonenergy.us/2019/12/shale-we-review-the-2010s/). In this article, we will discuss another trend that was significant in the 2010s – declining energy prices. Natural Gas Prices  One major effect of…

Read More

Balancing Congestion

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved a change in PJM’s (the Mid-Atlantic grid operator) tariff, allowing them to shift what are called “balancing congestion” costs to load serving entities. FERC approved PJM’s tariff revision with an effective date of June 1. Suppliers have indicated that they intend to pass through these charges. Suppliers include a…

Read More

Natural Gas and Electricity Are Parting Ways – Part 2

In our last article, Natural Gas and Electricity Are Parting Ways – Part 1, we explored the weakening correlation between wholesale natural gas prices and electricity prices in the Mid-Atlantic. While natural gas prices have fallen dramatically over the past seven years, and electricity prices have fallen as well, electricity prices have not fallen as…

Read More

Natural Gas and Electricity Are Parting Ways – Part 1

In recent articles, we have explored the dramatic decline in natural gas prices over the past seven years. See These Are Days To Remember and10,000 Maniacs Were Right. In the US Mid-Atlantic, natural gas and electricity prices have, over time, tended to move together. While there has by no means been a perfect correlation between…

Read More

In The News – Avalon Energy Services

Avalon Energy Services recently completed an electricity procurement project for KBS Capital Advisors’ One Washingtonian Center property in Gaithersburg, MD. Marc Deluca, Regional President of KBS, noted that “Electricity markets have exhibited extreme volatility. The folks at Avalon Energy Services have deep expertise and an unsurpassed understanding of the energy markets and how they work.…

Read More

What Does Volatility Look Like?

This article looks at how cold weather led to great volatility in real-time wholesale electricity prices during January 2014 in the PJM Interconnection (PJM). The month of January 2014 was the coldest in decades in the US as a Polar Vortex pushed its way into the Midwest, South, and East. Winter electricity use in the…

Read More