One of the biggest players in the U.S. power industry is called PJM Interconnection.

PJM oversees the energy market across 13 states, from New Jersey to Pennsylvania to Kentucky,

and serves about 67 million people.

Where your electricity comes from is something that, like, I feel like most Americans are usually pretty lucky not to have to think about.

Really, none of us should know who PJM is.

Normal people should not really be thinking about who their grid operator is.

Unlike most normal people, my colleague Jennifer Hiller really be thinking about who their grid operator is. Unlike most normal people,

my colleague Jennifer Hiller has been thinking about PJM a lot. They are kind of like air traffic control for the electricity market and, you know, making sure that supply and demand are in balance.

And right now, PJM has a problem.

AI data centers are putting a huge strain on the power grid.

So data centers are a really big new customer, essentially, for the power grid.

And it's almost like endless or bottomless

how much energy they are asking to use.

A large data center can eat up a gigawatt of power or more.

That's like an entire city.

So that's, you know, one customer saying

I need the power of a whole city right here.

There's so much demand for power that the supply is struggling to keep up, and it's pushing PJM to the brink.

Is it possible that this could lead to a situation where there has to be blackouts?

Well, nobody is ever happy to lose power. And definitely blackouts are the situation that you want to

avoid at all costs. But the system is getting more stressed in different ways. And the risks are rising.

Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power.

...