DOE order eases permit limits on 38 PJM units and taps backup power

PJM Interconnection may run 38 listed gas, oil and coal units past the environmental permit limits that would otherwise hold them back, and order backup generators at data centers and other large sites to switch on before it cuts firm load, under an emergency order Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued October 12, 2026 under section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act. Order No. 202-26-50 runs from October 13 through October 16, the window PJM asked for in its October 11 application. PJM must report every unit that runs under it to DOE daily, and the order notes that rate recovery is available.

The squeeze comes from the equipment that is out, not from record demand. PJM told DOE it expected load "at or around 111,500 MW (or higher)" on October 13, generation outages reaching around 61,591 MW, felt most acutely in the BGE, Pepco and Dominion zones, and that it would be within 900 MW of its reserve margin on October 14. Mid-September to early December is typically when PJM's generators and transmission owners do their maintenance, so that equipment is ready for winter; a warm spell in October finds a large share of it offline. By 4 p.m. on October 12, PJM's forecast had risen to 112,447 MW for October 13 and 112,282 MW for October 14. It had issued a Maximum Generation Alert and Load Management Alert for October 13, recalled all active generation maintenance outage tickets effective noon on October 14, and still expected about 62,000 MW of generation out through the period.

PJM's application compares the setup to September 17, when peak load was 127,729 MW with 33,899 MW of generation out: the October peak is forecast lower, but outages are 27,692 MW higher. (PJM's own review of the September heat, posted October 12, puts that day's peak "just shy of 127,000 MW" and outages at 37,916 MW on September 18.) By our arithmetic from the application, the October 13 forecast sits about 16,000 MW below the September 17 peak; the missing megawatts are on the supply side. The transmission system is tight too: PJM lists limits on north-to-south flows over the Conastone-Peach Bottom 500 kV facility, west-to-east flows over the Crete-St. Johns 345 kV tie with MISO, and seams transfers over Fostoria-Lallendorf, with MISO under its own Capacity Advisory and Conservative Operations from October 12.

What the order allows

The relief goes almost entirely to gas. Version 1 of Exhibit A, submitted October 12, lists 38 units with about 8,900 MW of approximate nameplate capacity by our sum. Thirty-two burn natural gas, five burn gas or oil, and one, Mount Storm 1 in West Virginia (542 MW), burns bituminous coal. The listed constraints run from carbon monoxide exceedances to rolling-hour nitrogen oxide averages; nine are Illinois combustion turbines whose stated limit is Illinois CEJA 12-month rolling emission caps. PJM's application says the listed units did not oppose the relief. PJM can add units by emailing DOE, and a newly named unit counts as covered unless DOE objects.

The order also says the emissions, hours of operation and fuel burned by those units and by backup generators while it is in effect "will not be counted toward applicable rolling-average based limitations." For a unit whose binding constraint is a 12-month average, that clause is the relief: hours run under the order never enter the average.

Backup generation of nearly any kind is in scope: "whether auxiliary, standby, directly-connected, battery storage, or other, and whether synchronized or not to the bulk power system." PJM may direct it to run "as a last resort before declaring an EEA 3 (i.e., before firm load interruption) or during an EEA 3," and may call on its transmission owners and electric distribution companies to carry that out. DOE writes that it understands PJM wants to deploy backup generation at data centers, "including, but not limited to, hyperscaler facilities," and other large industrial and commercial sites. Backup units at hospitals, 911 call centers, water treatment plants, defense and first-responder sites, natural gas pipeline facilities and similar facilities are exempt, and backup generation run under the order "shall not be considered a capacity resource."

In July, about 3,800 MW of Dominion-zone data center load moved to backup power on its own after a single line fault, and PJM has since proposed ride-through rules to keep that from happening. This order lets PJM ask for the same move on purpose, at the moment it would otherwise start shedding load.

The shoulder season keeps tightening

How much backup power PJM could actually call on is not in the record. DOE estimates more than 35 GW of unused backup generation remains available nationwide, per its release on the order, and Wright's January 22 letter to grid operators promised 202(c) orders to make "tens of gigawatts" of it available in emergencies; none of the order, the application or the release puts a figure on PJM's share. The application cites a string of earlier orders this year, from January 25 to September 1, that let PJM or other regions dispatch backup generation in similar circumstances.

This is PJM's second heat-and-maintenance squeeze in a month. Its review says DOE emergency orders were used in both recent hot spells, August 31 to September 4 and September 15 to 18, including one effective September 2 to 8 that also covered backup generation, and that system conditions are tightening "as new generation additions continue to be outpaced by rising overall demand." Outages can only be pushed so far: "Ultimately, we have to take these transmission and generation outages, and we can't simply defer them indefinitely," PJM senior dispatch manager Paul Dajewski told the Operating Committee.

The order also lands three days after FERC rejected PJM's plan to curtail new large loads at EEA1, early in an emergency, a plan FERC said appeared to ignore a reliability standard that permits involuntary firm-load curtailment only after an EEA3. DOE's order works the other side of that line: large loads keep running on their own power, as a last resort before an EEA3 or during one.

The order expires after October 16, the day PJM said temperatures are forecast to drop. Any renewal must be requested before then.