The operator of the regional power grid that electrifies Ohio is waving a red flag.
Demand for kilowatts in the state is growing faster than the power being generated, driven primarily by the growth of data centers. That misalignment between supply and demand could lead to capacity shortages by June 2026, PJM warned stakeholders in a recent report.
“We are in a supply demand crunch right now," said Asim Haque, a senior vice president at PJM, which is the regional organization that manages the transmission grid that Ohio is part of.
“We operate the power grid like an air traffic controller. Like the airline industry, making sure that electrons get from point A to point B across 13 states and the District of Columbia," Haque said.
But demand for electricity is going up, primarily driven by data center development, and supply is not keeping pace.
PJM recently calculated its long-term load forecast and found there might not be enough electricity to affordably power every device, home or industry that’s plugged into the grid, as soon as June 2026.
“We are coming up against completely changing the expectations of how consumers interact with electricity, which is they flip the switch and the light goes on. And when they get their bill, it's not insanely cost prohibitive," Haque said. "And I think that we are unfortunately about to enter an era where those two items are going to be challenged just based upon the supply demand fundamentals.”
But Haque says auctions for the 2025-2026 season showed there is already significantly less energy available for reserve margins than there was in the 2024-2025 season.
“That is a very, very stark statistic that folks need to be paying attention to," Haque said. "Because the further we dip into that reserve margin, the closer and closer we are going to get as the air traffic controller to saying, 'I'm sorry, consumers at large, governmental official A, we are going to have to shut off the grid in this area for this particular period of time.' Seemingly incomprehensible in the United States of America. But we are, I think, every power grid operator in the country is facing this very issue.”
But demands on the grid just keep coming.
“We are projected to average over the summer about a 3.1% per year level of growth over the next 10 years and in the winter will average about a 3.8% per year level of growth over the next 10 years," Haque said.
That’s after holding relatively flat for years, Haque said.
“So that's pretty substantial growth that we're seeing. The primary drivers are data centers, unequivocally. There's also quite a bit of growth in the electric vehicle space. But data centers are the predominant reason for the increase in that demand forecast in the greater Columbus, Ohio area," Haque said.
He said PJM has been encouraging the "obvious" solution, more supply.
But new sources of generation aren’t coming online quick enough.
“Supply is leaving the system at a rapid pace. A lot of it is due to the decarbonization policy efforts that have occurred at the state and federal level," Haque said.
Haque said moving toward renewable sources such as solar power or wind farms is laudable, but that the system needs large-scale, stable generation to secure reliability. He said the technology isn't there at that scale.
“We welcome those projects to find their way onto the grid, but we're going to need a lot of them or more thermal generation, which is, generally speaking, nuclear gas or coal to find their way onto the system to take sort of, we'll just characterize them as broader swaths of our reliability concern," Haque said.
Haque said several projects in the works have met with frustrating delays caused by the global supply chain, high inflation and the siting and permitting processes.
Haque is calling on politicians at all levels to make it easier for new projects to come online, and he has a message for policy makers.
“Please don't advance policy that pushes resources off of the system until replacements have been shown to be operational. Okay?" Haque said. "Please don't push resources off before those new resources that you're hoping come to fruition are actually there and running and functioning.”
He said the risks are real.
“The majority of the country is either at an elevated or a high risk of a reliability event across the country. And it's not a story that's being told. Our grid, from a purely supply demand perspective, is in trouble," Haque said.
