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PJM Capacity Auctions, Historical Clearing Prices Annotated

Last reviewed: 2026-05-10. Compiled from PJM Inside Lines press releases, PJM Base Residual Auction reports, Monitoring Analytics (Independent Market Monitor) filings, FERC orders, and contemporaneous reporting by Utility Dive, RTO Insider, S&P Global, and Canary Media. All figures in nominal dollars unless otherwise noted.

Why these auctions matter

Most of the U.S. electricity grid does not have a public, forward, market-cleared price for capacity. In the eastern interconnection, the PJM Reliability Pricing Model (RPM) Base Residual Auction (BRA) is the conspicuous exception. Once a year, PJM holds a single, simultaneous, locational auction to procure capacity three years forward across thirteen states plus D.C. The output of that auction is the cleanest public number the U.S. produces on what resource adequacy actually costs.

For an AI-capex analyst, that matters for three reasons:

  1. PJM's footprint contains the densest data-center load growth in North America. Northern Virginia's "Data Center Alley" sits inside the Dominion (DOM) Local Delivery Area; the Baltimore/D.C. corridor sits inside BGE; the AEP and ComEd zones are seeing similar large-load applications. When the BRA prints, it is the only public, contemporaneous market signal on how data-center demand is colliding with supply.

  2. The clearing price flows into retail bills. PJM capacity costs are passed through to load-serving entities (LSEs), then to residential, commercial, and industrial customers. The 2025/26 BRA result alone added roughly $12 billion to the cost of serving PJM load in a single delivery year. That was an order-of-magnitude jump and it broke into general-press coverage of the data-center build-out.

  3. The auction is the trigger for federal regulatory action. Every BRA outcome since 2024 has produced a FERC filing, a state-level challenge, an Independent Market Monitor (IMM) report, or all three. The auction is now the procedural choke point through which the politics of AI-driven load growth flow.

This wiki entry assembles the full historical record of BRA clearing prices and annotates the recent inflection.

Auction mechanics primer

The PJM capacity market was approved by FERC in 2006 and the first BRA was held in April 2007 for the 2007/08 delivery year. The mechanics, simplified:

  • Delivery year runs June 1 through May 31 (so "2027/28" means June 1, 2027 through May 31, 2028).
  • Base Residual Auction (BRA) is held three years ahead of the delivery year, procuring the bulk of capacity needs. Smaller "Incremental Auctions" reconcile the position closer to real time.
  • Reliability requirement is a forecast peak load, scaled up by the Installed Reserve Margin (IRM) the PJM Board adopts each year (typically targeted near 20%). UCAP (unforced capacity) is the de-rated form actually procured.
  • Variable Resource Requirement (VRR) curve is the administrative demand curve PJM bids into the auction on behalf of load. It is downward-sloping: more capacity is bought when prices are low, less when prices are high, with a hard maximum at the "Cap" price.
  • Locational Delivery Areas (LDAs) are sub-zones with transmission import limits. When binding, LDAs clear at separation premiums above the RTO-wide price. Most-cited LDAs: MAAC (Mid-Atlantic Area Council, the eastern half of PJM), EMAAC (eastern MAAC, includes NJ, DE, eastern PA), SWMAAC, PSEG, PEPCO, BGE (Baltimore), DPL-South (Delmarva), DOM (Dominion / Northern Virginia), ComEd (northern Illinois), ATSI (American Transmission Systems, NE Ohio), DEOK (Duke Energy Ohio/Kentucky), APS, ATSI-Cleveland.
  • Cleared resources are paid the locational clearing price (in $/MW-day, UCAP) every day of the delivery year regardless of whether they actually run. Failure to deliver during emergencies triggers Capacity Performance non-performance charges, the post-Polar-Vortex reform that became central to the Winter Storm Elliott settlement.

The "cleared dollar value" of an auction is roughly: cleared MW × clearing price × 365 days. That is the gross check that flows from load to capacity sellers over a delivery year.

Historical clearing price table (every BRA, 2007/08 through 2027/28)

All prices in $/MW-day of UCAP. RTO is the rest-of-pool price; LDA columns show notable zonal separations. "Total cleared" is the headline dollar value of the auction. Auction dates are when results were posted.

Delivery Year Auction date RTO ($/MW-d) Notable LDA prices ($/MW-d) Cleared UCAP (MW) Reserve margin Total cleared ($B)
2007/08 Apr 2007 40.80 MAAC 197.67; SWMAAC 188.54 ~129,409 17.4% ~2.1
2008/09 Jul 2007 111.92 MAAC 210.11; SWMAAC 210.11 ~129,597 18.2% ~5.6
2009/10 Jan 2008 102.04 EMAAC 191.32; MAAC 191.32 ~132,231 18.5% ~5.4
2010/11 May 2008 174.29 EMAAC 174.29; MAAC 174.29 ~132,190 19.4% ~8.4
2011/12 May 2009 110.00 EMAAC 110.00; SWMAAC 110.00 ~132,221 21.6% ~5.3
2012/13 May 2010 16.46 EMAAC 139.73; MAAC 27.95 ~135,943 19.6% ~0.8
2013/14 May 2011 27.73 EMAAC 245.00; MAAC 226.15; PSEG 245.00 ~152,743 20.7% ~1.5
2014/15 May 2011 125.99 EMAAC 136.50; PSEG 167.46 ~153,634 19.6% ~7.1
2015/16 May 2012 136.00 EMAAC 167.46; MAAC 136.00; ATSI 357.00 ~164,561 20.1% ~8.2
2016/17 May 2013 59.37 EMAAC 119.13; ATSI 114.23; PSEG 215.00 ~169,159 20.2% ~3.7
2017/18 May 2014 120.00 EMAAC 119.77; PSEG 215.00; ATSI 357.00 (binding); ComEd 120.00 ~166,836 19.7% ~7.3
2018/19 Aug 2015 164.77 EMAAC 225.42; PSEG 225.42; ComEd 215.00; ATSI 164.77 ~167,003 19.8% ~10.1
2019/20 May 2016 100.00 EMAAC 119.77; ComEd 202.77; MAAC 100.00 ~166,837 23.9% ~6.1
2020/21 May 2017 76.53 EMAAC 187.87; ComEd 188.12; PSEG 187.87 ~165,109 23.3% ~4.6
2021/22 May 2018 140.00 EMAAC 165.73; ComEd 195.55; PSEG 204.29; BGE 200.30 ~163,627 21.5% ~8.4
2022/23 May 2019 (delayed; full reset auction) 140.00 (CP transition complete; same RTO across) ~144,477 21.5% ~7.4
2023/24 Jun 2022 34.13 MAAC 49.49; BGE 69.95; DPL-S 69.95 ~144,878 21.6% ~2.2
2024/25 Dec 2022 28.92 MAAC 49.49; BGE 73.00; DPL-S 426.17; EMAAC 53.60; DEOK ≈ 49.49 ~147,479 20.4% ~2.2
2025/26 Jul 30, 2024 269.92 DOM 444.26; BGE 466.35; rest = RTO 135,684 18.5% 14.7
2026/27 Jul 22, 2025 329.17 (FERC cap; cleared at cap across entire footprint) All LDAs = 329.17 (price cap binding) 134,311 ~18% 16.1
2027/28 Dec 17, 2025 333.44 (FERC cap; cleared at cap across entire footprint) All LDAs = 333.44 (price cap binding); 6,623 MW short of reliability requirement 134,479 ~14.8% (first under-procurement RTO-wide) 16.4

The table merits four notes:

  • Several pre-2015 years had a Capacity Performance (CP) product split that priced separately; figures above are the RTO base/all-resource equivalents typically cited in PJM reports.
  • The 2022/23 BRA was rescheduled multiple times after FERC's December 2019 order on the MOPR (Minimum Offer Price Rule) and was the first auction held under a re-set RPM framework.
  • Pre-2024 data points are widely tabulated in PJM auction reports (Table 1 in each year's BRA report) and in third-party trackers such as NRG's "Historical BRA Clearing Prices." Where source-vs-source discrepancies appear (a dollar or two of MW count), the canonical PJM number governs.
  • The 2025/26 number is the headline that broke the auction into general-press coverage: a roughly 800% increase versus the 2024/25 RTO clear.

The 2025-2027 inflection

Three auctions in eighteen months turned PJM capacity from a sleepy back-office number into a federal political controversy. Read them as a sequence:

July 30, 2024 — the 2025/26 BRA, posted from PJM Inside Lines. RTO cleared at $269.92/MW-day, an order-of-magnitude jump from $28.92 a year earlier. Dominion separated at $444.26 and BGE at $466.35 — those two LDAs alone carry the densest data-center load (Northern Virginia and the Baltimore corridor). PJM cleared 135,684 MW, an 18.5% reserve margin (down from 20.4%). Total cleared dollar value: $14.7 billion, roughly $12 billion more than the 2024/25 delivery year's $2.2 billion. PJM's own consumer-impact estimate at the time pointed to bill increases of 1.5% to 5% depending on state.

July 22, 2025 — the 2026/27 BRA. RTO cleared at $329.17/MW-day — the FERC-approved temporary price cap that PJM had agreed to install after Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro's December 2024 complaint (FERC Docket EL25-46) and PJM's subsequent Section 205 filings (ER25-682, ER25-712). Because the cap bound for the entire footprint, every LDA cleared at the cap, including DOM and BGE. PJM procured 134,311 MW, total cleared value $16.1 billion (+9.5% versus 2025/26). PJM's own estimate: 1.5% to 5% residential bill impact, varying by state. PJM noted that without the cap-and-collar, the auction would have cleared near $389/MW-day. (Monitoring Analytics later put the counterfactual still higher at $141,828/MW-year, i.e., ~$389/MW-day; some sources cite higher numbers depending on whether the price floor was modeled out as well.) The resource mix that cleared: gas-fired 45%, coal 22%, nuclear 21%, hydro 4%, wind 3%, solar 1%.

December 17, 2025 — the 2027/28 BRA, the first one held to "December-cycle" timing rather than the May-cycle that prevailed for a decade. RTO cleared at $333.44/MW-day — again, at the cap — across every LDA. Procurement totaled 134,479 MW. The reliability requirement implied by PJM's 2025 Long-Term Load Forecast was 141,102 MW (a 2027/28-delivery-year peak of roughly 153,883 MW plus the IRM). The auction fell 6,623 MW short of that reliability requirement — the first time in PJM history that the BRA failed to procure to the IRM-target on a system-wide basis, even after including Fixed Resource Requirement (FRR) plan capacity. Total cleared value: $16.4 billion. Reserve margin cleared was approximately 14.8% versus a 20% target — the lowest on record.

Two structural facts about the 2027/28 result reinforce the inflection:

  • Demand response surged: 7,299 MW of DR cleared (up from 5,531 MW), and the demand-response ELCC rating (the share of nameplate that counts toward capacity) jumped from 69% to 92%, reflecting PJM accreditation changes that finally credited DR's actual reliability contribution.
  • Supply did respond: Roughly 145,777 MW of capacity was offered into 2027/28, but the binding cap meant 809.6 MW priced itself above $333.44 and did not clear. Without the cap, that supply would have been bought at a higher market-clearing price.

A useful frame for an AI-capex narrative: the first two record auctions (2025/26 and 2026/27) priced data-center demand into existing supply. The third (2027/28) is the one where, even at the cap, PJM could not buy enough.

The IMM's diagnosis: data centers are doing this

The Independent Market Monitor for PJM is Monitoring Analytics, LLC. Its analyses of each BRA, plus filings at FERC, are the most pointed contemporaneous expert commentary on the auctions. Three findings have anchored the public debate.

Forty-five percent of three-auction cleared cost is forecast data-center load. Monitoring Analytics' most-quoted finding: across the 2025/26, 2026/27, and 2027/28 auctions, data-center forecasts beyond existing data-center load drove $21.3 billion of the $47.2 billion in cleared capacity cost — 45%. For the 2027/28 BRA alone, the IMM reported that data-center load accounted for $6.5 billion (40%) of the $16.4 billion total cleared cost, with $6.2 billion of that tied to data centers not yet built that could come online by June 2027.

"But for data center growth..." The 2025/26 IMM report (Monitoring Analytics, June 3, 2025, Analysis of the 2025/2026 RPM Base Residual Auction) reconstructs the auction counterfactually. Excluding the 7,927 MW of forecast or existing data-center load from the 2025 peak forecast, the IMM concludes that "total RPM market revenues for the 2025/2026 RPM Base Residual Auction would have been $5,354,943,499, a decrease of $9,332,103,858, or 63.5 percent."

The same report states (quoting from Monitoring Analytics' summary):

"But for data center growth, both actual and forecast, the PJM Capacity Market would not have seen the tight supply demand conditions, the high prices observed in the BRA for 2025/2026 or the high prices expected for the 2026/2027 and subsequent capacity auctions. The current conditions are not the result of organic load growth. The current conditions in the capacity market are almost entirely the result of large load additions from data centers, both actual historical and forecast."

And:

"The extreme uncertainty in the load forecasts based on uncertainty about the addition of large data center loads is also unique and unprecedented and raises questions about the meaning of clearing a capacity auction based on those forecasts."

The IMM has gone to FERC. On November 25, 2025, Monitoring Analytics filed both a comment in Docket No. RM26-4 and a separate complaint regarding data-center load treatment (Docket EL26-XX), arguing that PJM's load forecast methodology assigns the cost of speculative, not-yet-built data-center load to all PJM customers, and that the capacity market's administrative pricing parameters (specifically the VRR curve, the IRM, and the cap-and-collar) are not designed to handle the kind of forecast uncertainty large new loads inject. The IMM has historically been critical of administrative (regulator-set) pricing parameters generally, arguing they distort scarcity signals; in the cap-and-collar context, the IMM has joined with LS Power in warning that suppressing the upper price could deter generation investment — a structural concern that runs in the opposite direction from the consumer-protection rationale Shapiro and FERC cited.

The IMM's other recurring concern is interconnection: until PJM can clear the new-generation queue faster, the demand-side cost of data-center load growth will keep flowing through the BRA into customer bills. The point is not that the BRA is broken; it is that the forecast that feeds the BRA is being driven by speculative interconnection requests on the load side that have no symmetric process on the generation side.

FERC's role

FERC has acted at three pressure points.

Capacity Performance and Winter Storm Elliott (2022-2024). Winter Storm Elliott (December 23-25, 2022) saw roughly 45,950 MW (23.2% of PJM's fleet) unexpectedly offline on December 24 — gas equipment failures, fuel-supply failures, and frozen plants. Under PJM's Capacity Performance regime (adopted post-Polar-Vortex), generators that took capacity payments and failed to perform during emergencies are assessed non-performance charges. The total bill was about $1.8 billion. Generators challenged the charges; PJM and 80 parties reached a settlement that reduced the penalties by 31.7% to roughly $1.2 billion, and FERC approved that settlement. PJM separately proposed a series of CP refinements, including eliminating the "physical option" for FRR participants — an attempt to equalize treatment between FRR and capacity-market sellers. That set of post-Elliott reforms is part of why the 2025/26 auction's cleared resource mix is more conservative on accreditation; gas units in particular face tighter ELCC ratings.

Price cap-and-collar (Docket EL25-46 / ER25-682 / ER25-712, late-2024 through 2025). In December 2024 Pennsylvania (Shapiro Administration) filed a complaint at FERC arguing PJM's pre-2025/26 auction parameters would produce a disproportionate consumer harm. PJM and stakeholders negotiated a settlement establishing a temporary cap at $325/MW-day net Cost of New Entry (CONE) and a floor at $175/MW-day (often called the "cap-and-collar") applicable to the 2026/27 and 2027/28 delivery years. FERC approved the cap-and-collar package in summer 2025. After ELCC and reference resource updates, the actual binding caps in the two cap-period auctions were $329.17/MW-day (2026/27) and $333.44/MW-day (2027/28). FERC commissioner statements emphasized that the cap is a "reasonable, temporary measure" — not a permanent design change.

Reliability-related dockets following the 2027/28 BRA shortfall. Because the 2027/28 BRA did not procure to the reliability requirement, PJM has signaled it will file additional tariff changes — likely targeting the load forecast methodology and the treatment of large new loads, plus a possible re-set of administrative pricing parameters once the cap-and-collar expires. The 2028/29 BRA scheduled for the summer of 2026 is the first auction at which the structural design fight will visibly land.

Per-customer impact

PJM's published consumer impacts and third-party estimates do not always agree, but they converge inside a band.

  • PJM's own estimate, after the 2025/26 BRA and again after 2026/27: a 1.5%-5% residential bill increase, varying by state and LSE pass-through mechanism.
  • PJM's framing for the 2027/28 BRA (Stu Bresler, EVP, on the December 17, 2025 press call): because the year-over-year clearing price moved only $4.27/MW-day (from $329.17 to $333.44), the incremental impact on residential bills from the 2027/28 BRA itself is small. The cumulative impact from the three-year jump is the large number.
  • Cap-and-collar avoided cost. PJM estimates that without the temporary cap, the 2027/28 BRA would have cleared near $530/MW-day (some sources cite $529.80; Monitoring Analytics' counterfactual lands closer to $193,907/MW-year, i.e., the same ballpark). The "ratepayer saving" attributable to the cap is on the order of $10 billion for 2027/28 alone, on PJM's numbers.
  • Aggregate, multi-year impact. NRDC's analysis projects that absent further reform, average PJM residential bills could rise by approximately $70/month by 2028, and that cumulative capacity-driven cost from 2028-2033 could approach $163 billion. Canary Media and Citizens Utility Board cite similar bands. Citizens Utility Board's Sarah Moskowitz, after the 2027/28 result: "consumers are getting the worst of all worlds: paying more money for reduced electric reliability."
  • Stranded capacity payments. A particular source of advocate concern is that capacity is paid for the forecast large load even where the underlying data center has not been built or interconnected. Monitoring Analytics' $6.2 billion figure for the 2027/28 auction — capacity paid for to serve data centers that "haven't been built but could come online by June 2027" — is the cleanest dollar estimate of this stranded-payment risk. If those data centers are delayed, cancelled, or relocated outside PJM, capacity sellers still collect.

Three further inferences worth carrying forward:

  1. The pass-through to retail bills is non-uniform. States with full retail competition (PA, IL, OH, MD, NJ) see capacity costs flow through default-service auctions over the following year, with most of the 2025/26 bill impact landing on customers in mid-2025 and the 2026/27 impact in mid-2026.
  2. Utility-by-utility default-service auctions held in PJM in 2025 cleared at the highest levels in a decade, in part because suppliers had to bid in the new capacity cost. Several state regulators (NJ BPU, MD PSC, IL ICC) opened proceedings; CUB and other consumer advocates filed at FERC.
  3. The cap-and-collar's expiration after the 2027/28 delivery year is the cliff. Unless PJM, FERC, and the states agree on a permanent design change, the 2028/29 auction (to be held in 2026) reverts to administrative pricing parameters set without the Shapiro-era constraints. Every party — generators, LSEs, IMM, advocates, and state regulators — is preparing for that fight.

Sources and direct URLs

PJM auction reports and press releases (primary documents)

Independent Market Monitor (Monitoring Analytics)

Contemporaneous reporting

Analytical / industry sources

Regulatory / state actions