Ohio senators recently got an update from state utility regulators and an official with the regional grid operator, PJM Interconnection, offering an early progress report on a utility overhaul passed last year and a look ahead at how Ohio can align demand for power with supply.

The view from Ohio

Public Utilities Commission of Ohio Chair Jenifer French told lawmakers it has been full speed ahead since passage of Ohio House Bill 15 almost a year ago. That measure imposed shorter regulatory timelines at the PUCO and encouraged private investment in new power generation. That includes traditional power plants and so-called ‘behind-the-meter’ installations — standalone power directly serving a facility rather than connecting to the power grid.

In 2025, French said, the commission signed off on 2,000 megawatts of behind-the-meter power and received applications for 2,755 megawatts of traditional gas generating facilities.

“So just to put this into perspective,” French told the committee, “this is more gas-fired generation that has been applied to be sited or has been sited in Ohio than in the past 20 years.”

She touted the 10,000-megawatt natural gas plant planned at a decommissioned nuclear enrichment site in Piketon. The Japanese company SoftBank plans to put $33 billion into the data center project.

French painted a sunny picture for solar development in the state, too. In 2025, commissioners approved four utility solar projects totaling just shy of 700 megawatts

“Since I became chair in the March of 2021 the board has approved approximately 7,420 megawatts of solar generation in this state. In terms of project numbers, that’s 39 total solar projects, six of which also have battery storage.”

She noted Ohio ranks 12th in the nation for installed solar capacity.

But that version of events likely rings hollow with solar energy’s boosters in Ohio. Since 2021, state law allows local authorities to block renewable energy projects. They can do nothing to stop fossil fuel-powered plants. The law lays out a specific process for local governments to prohibit renewable developments. But in several recent cases the Ohio Power Siting Board has determined public opposition is enough to declare a project is not in the public interest.

The Ohio Supreme Court is currently weighing a case in which the siting board apparently called local officials at the last minute and then decided against a solar project.

Just last month, the PUCO denied a different development in Morrow County even though many of the public comments against the project were apparently fake. Stung by the denial, the developer said it won’t build in Ohio again.

The view from PJM

PJM Interconnection is the largest regional transmission organization in the country, serving 13 states and Washington, D.C. Asim Haque heads up governmental and member services for the nonprofit grid operator, and he told lawmakers his organization is navigating “historic growth in demand — growth like we haven’t seen since the Industrial Revolution.”

The culprit for that skyrocketing demand? Data centers, Haque said.

“There is some demand growth that is due to electrification, and in the onshoring of U.S. manufacturing,” he explained, “but primarily where we’re seeing this major uptick in demand is through the proliferation of data centers.”

To meet that demand, Haque said, PJM has developed several fast-track programs to bring new power online quickly. Developers siting a new plant where an old one was retired can connect quickly if they’re producing a similar amount of power. Facilitates that don’t always meet their maximum output — like solar plants at night — can more easily supplement the project with power sources like battery storage. And to the consternation of environmentalists, PJM allowed oil and natural gas plants to jump ahead of renewable projects.

But Haque told committee members a significant hurdle in meeting that future demand isn’t PJM.

“We have a lot of projects that have completed the PJM processes,” he said, “They’ve got nothing left to do with PJM. They’ve been studied, but they are not building out.”

In all, there are roughly 54,000 megawatts of power ready to be built across the system.

“If you think about it, we’re a 180,000 or so megawatt system, and we expect for peak demand in 15 years to be 241,000 megawatts,” Haque explained. “And we already have 54,000, megawatts that are just sort of out there on the street. We get all that built out, we’re going to be in great shape.”

About a fifth of that ready-to-build power is in Ohio, and the vast majority of it is solar. Of 88 projects that have completed the PJM process and received interconnection agreements, 69 are solar.

Ohio state Sen. Kent Smith, D-Euclid, asked Haque whether Ohio’s local veto power for renewable projects has played a role.

Haque insisted, “It’s not a commentary on Ohio, it’s across the footprint,” but he acknowledged “there are a few different issues that we are seeing, but one of those issues is permitting.”

Who pays?

Haque also addressed PJM’s efforts on affordability. The grid operator runs what’s known as a capacity market to ensure there’s adequate power available during peak demand. Plants bid, and successful ones receive a payment to be available when demand peaks. The auctions are forward-looking; prices settled this year are for power three years down the line.

Just a few years ago, capacity prices were as low as $29 a megawatt. The following year they shot up to nearly $270 a megawatt and then jumped again the next year to about $330 a megawatt. Prices would likely have gone even higher if not for a court-mandated price cap sought by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.

“We agreed to extend that cap and floor for an additional two years,” Haque explained. “So that marketplace that created upward cost pressure for consumers has now been capped till the mid-2030s.”

And while keeping ratepayers’ bills in check is good, Haque was quick to note artificially limiting the market has consequences of its own. Because the capacity market puts a price on power three years in the future, it provides a signal to producers on whether or not to build.

“That price that’s capped,” Haque warned, “that’s not going to be enough to incentivize new supply.”

But if the wave of data centers planned for Ohio materializes, the grid will need major investments in power generation and transmission to keep up. And Haque told lawmakers it isn’t reasonable to think it will somehow get cheaper to make those upgrades.

“That’s not reality,” he said. “Those costs are going to increase. The question is, who pays?”

Haque said the short answer that state and federal leaders appear to be landing on is that data centers themselves should pay. But how that works in practice is a much longer answer.

It could mean requiring developers bring their own behind-the-meter power. Or perhaps it might look like AEP’s data center tariff aimed at ensuring data center developers pay for the infrastructure they need.

But at the end of the day, Haque told lawmakers how to answer the question is ultimately up to them.

“Our ability to effectuate that, ‘who pays?’ piece ends at a particular point,” he said.

Follow Ohio Capital Journal Reporter Nick Evans on X or on Bluesky.

Original story can be found at https://ohiocapitaljournal.com