NAT GAS Regulatory Bullish
Duke files a Carolinas plan with 14 GW of new gas behind a 30% load jump
Duke's 2026 Carolinas Resource Plan, filed Monday with South Carolina regulators, asks for 14 GW of gas, 18.5 GW of solar, 13 GW of storage and 4.5 GW of nuclear through 2041. The gas half splits 8.2 GW combined cycle and 5.8 GW of peakers, and Duke calls gas its major near-term reliability resource. Winter peak is forecast up more than 10 GW, roughly 30%, so that's a lot of new firm burn showing up on the demand side of the Southeast curve.
Utility Dive · Aug 20, 2026
NAT GAS Regulatory Bullish
Co-ops want the EPA gas plant carbon rule gone before they build for data centers
NRECA CEO Jim Matheson and the heads of Basin Electric, Associated Electric and Oglethorpe pushed Wednesday for a full repeal of the 2024 EPA rule that forces new gas plants running above a 40% capacity factor to capture 90% of their CO2 by 2032. They call the threshold and the carbon capture mandate untenable and say they can't plan around it. EPA's repeal proposal has been sitting at OMB past its 90-day deadline. Clear that rule and the gas build accelerates, and so does the burn.
Utility Dive · Aug 20, 2026
Regulatory Bearish
FERC lets SPP reconfigure its grid to route around congestion
FERC approved SPP's topology optimization plan Wednesday, letting the operator reconfigure the network to steer flows around bottlenecks instead of paying out of merit order. MISO has run a similar setup and saved close to $100 million this year. It should also cut how much wind SPP curtails. Software that squeezes congestion out of an existing system is the cheapest supply there is, and it puts downward pressure on the congestion component buyers pay.
Utility Dive · FERC · Aug 20, 2026
ISO-NE NYISO Bearish
Canada puts $70B behind Quebec hydro and wind, and some of it lands here
Ottawa, Newfoundland and Labrador, and Quebec signed a roughly $70 billion deal Aug. 17 to build new hydropower, onshore wind and transmission, including Churchill Falls. None of it is aimed at the US, but more Hydro-Quebec supply frees up net exports, and the wires to move it already exist in CHPE and NECEC. New England and New York both sit downstream of that.
RTO Insider · Aug 19, 2026
PJM Regulatory Bearish
Pennsylvania ties fast permitting to data centers bringing their own new supply
Gov. Shapiro's executive order gives projects over 25 MW preferential DEP review only if they sign a consent order to source power from new generation in their own PJM zone and pay their own interconnection costs. Jefferies says it likely closes the door on IPPs like Talen, Vistra and PSEG selling existing output to Pennsylvania data centers under long-term deals. Speculative load gets weeded out and new build gets pulled in behind it, and both of those take pressure off what PJM buyers pay.
Utility Dive · Aug 19, 2026
PJM Neutral
PJM's new five-year strategy puts reliability first and promises faster market reform
PJM presented "Shaping a Powerful Change" to the Members Committee Wednesday, built on four priorities: modernize control room operations with AI and automation, build durable market signals with the states, speed up transmission and interconnection studies, and cut friction out of the stakeholder process. The board approved it in July and a priority road map is still being written. Nothing here changes a clearing price yet, but "investable market signals" is the line to watch, because that's the argument for keeping capacity revenue high.
PJM Inside Lines · Aug 19, 2026
ERCOT Regulatory Neutral
Texas House spends nine hours on 765-kV backlash and settles nothing
The House State Affairs Committee took nine hours of testimony Wednesday on the fight over new 765-kV lines and the data centers driving them, and came out with recommendations but no decisions. Landowners want routes moved, developers want the wires built. Until siting and who pays get resolved, the ERCOT transmission plan stays on the slow track, which cuts both ways on congestion and basis.
The Texas Tribune · Aug 19, 2026
ISO-NE Bearish
Utilities start pitching VPPs as an affordability tool, not just a reliability one
On a Regulatory Assistance Project webinar Tuesday, RMI's Kevin Brehm said utilities now count VPPs as a way to cut demand when wholesale prices spike and shave capacity and transmission charges, not just to keep the lights on. National Grid has 7.2 MW committed across 19 non-wires projects in Massachusetts through ConnectedSolutions+, paying more for deeper and better-timed dispatch. Residential batteries and managed EV charging are the fastest-growing pieces. Every megawatt that shows up at the evening peak is a megawatt suppliers don't have to buy there.
Utility Dive · Aug 19, 2026
NAT GAS Bearish
Permian super-laterals keep gas supply climbing on a flat well count
EIA says Permian operators have pushed average lateral length up 77% in a decade, to 10,867 feet, and super-laterals over 15,000 feet went from basically nothing to 15% of 2025 completions. Well count has sat near 6,000 a year since 2022 while output ran from 2.9 million boe/d in 2015 to 11.2 million. That's the associated-gas engine behind EIA's record 122.5 Bcf/d call for this year, and it doesn't need higher prices to keep running.
EIA · Aug 19, 2026
ISO-NE Regulatory Neutral
Five New England governors move to block the NextEra-Dominion merger
Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Rhode Island say the deal would hand NextEra an unprecedented amount of leverage over the region, and Massachusetts is intervening in the federal proceedings. The sticking point for anyone buying power here is ownership. Approve it and Seabrook and Millstone, New England's last two nuclear plants, sit under one roof. Nothing moves on price until FERC rules, but concentration in a market this supply-tight is worth watching.
Maine Public · Aug 18, 2026
NYISO Regulatory Neutral
New York tightens DER interconnection but keeps developers on the hook for overruns
The Public Service Commission told New York utilities Tuesday to file tariff amendments that speed up interconnection for distributed solar and storage and force more transparency on cost estimates. It also turned down most of what NYSEIA asked for, including a cap on what developers owe when a utility blows past its own estimate. More rooftop and community solar behind the meter softens the downstate peak, but the cost risk that's been stalling projects is still sitting with developers.
RTO Insider · Aug 18, 2026
ISO-NE Regulatory Neutral
ISO-NE asks FERC to let it review the $5B asset condition pipeline
ISO New England filed Monday to become the region's "asset condition reviewer" starting Jan. 1, giving it a look at replacement projects that transmission owners pick and build with almost no oversight. Those projects are 73% of annual TO capital spend and New England owners expect to add about $5 billion of them by 2034, roughly $1.3 billion next year. The role is advisory only, but the reports give states ammunition to fight cost recovery later. Sen. Blumenthal also filed a bill that would force FERC to weigh affordability in what counts as a just and reasonable rate.
Utility Dive · Aug 18, 2026 FERC
PJM Regulatory Bearish
FERC clears MISO to recover the cost of $909M of transmission built inside PJM
FERC signed off Friday on how MISO recovers costs for Tranche 2.1 projects that have to be built in PJM's footprint, with ComEd taking about $904 million of the work and Duke Ohio $5.3 million. It rejected calls to run those PJM facilities through competitive bidding, saying MISO can't order construction in another region. Commissioners Chang and Rosner used the order to push for more interregional transmission, and that's the kind of build that cuts congestion costs and takes some pressure off the peak prices suppliers pay.
Utility Dive · FERC · Aug 17, 2026
PJM Regulatory Bullish
DOE kills three national transmission corridors, including one aimed at PJM adequacy
DOE said Wednesday it won't designate three proposed National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors: Lake Erie to Canada, the Southwestern Grid Connector and Tribal Energy Access. The Lake Erie corridor was pitched as resource adequacy support for PJM, and NIETC status is what unlocks federal financing plus FERC backstop siting when states stall. Clean Air Task Force says all three targeted congestion, so pulling the designations leaves the same bottlenecks in place and keeps a floor under what PJM buyers pay.
Utility Dive · Aug 17, 2026
ERCOT Regulatory Bearish
ERCOT asks the PUC to break its own Batch Zero clock
ERCOT told the PUC it needs good-cause exceptions to Planning Guide Sections 5 and 9 so it can stop the Batch Zero study timeline while it runs Gov. Abbott's data center audit. The grid operator missed the Aug. 7 deadline to tell TSPs and DSPs how each large load was classified, and it says the audit will run several months starting shortly after the Aug. 20 open meeting. Every month those loads sit unclassified is a month of forecast demand that doesn't show up in the energy stack.
RTO Insider · Aug 16, 2026
ERCOT Regulatory Bearish
ERCOT will audit 250 to 300 projects carrying 200 GW before anything connects
ERCOT told the PUCT at a Friday emergency meeting that Abbott's audit covers the 250 to 300 Batch Zero projects, which carry about 200 GW of future demand, more than twice the grid's July peak record. The verification moves to the front of the line before any interconnection study and will take several months, though ERCOT still wants the first batch done by April. Any project that fails gets denied, so a chunk of that queue gets vetted out and won't show up as load.
The Texas Tribune · Aug 14, 2026
NYISO NAT GAS Regulatory Bullish
FERC clears the 1,242-MW Roseton sale that turns a 1974 plant into a data center campus
FERC signed off Thursday on PowerTransitions buying the gas- and oil-fired Roseton plant in NYISO Zone G from a Castleton subsidiary, and the New York PSC approved it the same day. PowerTransitions wants Roseton as the anchor of an "energy campus" serving data centers and other heavy loads, on top of five New York gas plants it already bought last month. FERC also cleared TransAlta's roughly $1 billion buy of 319 MW of contracted Colorado gas. Existing gas capacity getting pointed at new load means more burn and a tighter downstate market.
Utility Dive · FERC Aug 14, 2026