You've heard of Too Big to Fail?

What about Too Big to Function?

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

PJM Interconnection LLC is the country's largest electric grid operator, serving 13 states plus DC.

With the surge of demand from AI data centers, PJM is struggling to keep up, bringing scrutiny from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,

which questioned whether PJM is just too big to function.

The FERC meets next month to consider several reforms.

To explain the situation, we asked Ethan Howland, senior reporter at Utility Dive.

The way I look at it right now,

just the U.S. in general,

is dealing with two sort of issues at the same time.

And PGM is sort of at the epicenter of this,

and that is electricity prices have been going up,

especially in PJM.

So there's an affordability issue. And at the same time,

data centers and AI companies wanting to build these huge data centers that use vast amounts

of electricity, you know, a large data center can use as much electricity as a small city. And those two

issues have really hit the PJM states and PJM in the last, I'd say, two years. What kinds of

challenges is this surge of demand from new data centers causing for PJM?

The biggest challenge is just making sure that there's enough electricity available.

For years, most of the United States and the PJM region has experienced basically minimal growth in electric demand.

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