Grid emergencies used to be rare. Washington used its main emergency tool, Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, 20 times in 50 years. It has now used it more than 43 times in the past 14 months.
On July 2, PJM set a record peak of 168,158 megawatts during extreme heat. PJM runs the grid for 65 million people in 13 states. It asked for an emergency order that let it push data centers onto their own backup generators, hold aging plants back from retirement and allow plants to exceed pollution limits. It was PJM's third request this year. Every one of those measures carries a cost, and the bill lands in two places.
Keeping old plants running is expensive. Consumers Energy reported a net cost of $29 million for the first five weeks it kept its Campbell coal plant open under a DOE order, and the total has grown with each 90-day extension. Constellation spent about $4.8 million running its Eddystone plant under a first order. FERC cleared the way for both companies to pass those costs to customers across MISO and PJM.
Eddystone shows how old some of this equipment is. Its two 380-megawatt units came online between 1967 and 1970 and should have retired in 2025. The DOE has kept them running with one order after another. Aging plants also fail more often in the heat. Over the July 4 weekend, unplanned outages reached 18,100 to 19,400 megawatts, far above the 12,800-megawatt norm.
Northern Virginia has more than 9,000 backup generators that can supply data centers, and most burn diesel. Regulators went easy on permits because the machines seldom ran. Virginia's environmental regulator now plans tighter emissions rules for permits filed from July 1, 2026. The neighborhoods closest to data centers breathe the difference first.
Data centers account for nearly all the new strain in Virginia. Northern Virginia holds more data center capacity than the next five U.S. markets together. Dominion Energy serves about 450 data centers, and requests for new connections total 70 gigawatts, close to three times its highest-ever system peak of 24.7 gigawatts. New power plants take years to permit and build, so emergency measures fill the gap.
Until new supply catches up, these costs will keep landing on the same people. Merge4 works on a different part of the problem: the power distribution inside the data center. Our aim is faster, smarter power distribution that uses less and delivers more from what a site already has, including the floor space that protection no longer needs.
Anna is a serial entrepreneur, CEO, and strategist working at the intersection of AI, energy, and critical infrastructure. She holds a Ph.D in smart grid technology and writes for Forbes on AI, electrification, and the modernization of energy systems.
