By Mark Jaffe, EUCI energy writer
The PJM Interconnection – the country’s largest grid operator – will spend $11.8 billion in baseline transmission to address load growth in multiple areas of the network, spanning all or parts of 13 mid-Atlantic and Midwest states and the District of Columbia.
A major part of the funding – $4.8 billion – will go to Dominion Energy, which serves Viginia’s “data center alley,” the world’s largest concentration of data centers with nearly 300 facilities.
Other projects will address delays to New Jersey offshore wind projects and increased regional flows toward the eastern parts of PJM’s footprint.
PJM chose the final recommended projects from a total of 134 proposals – 57 greenfield projects and 77 upgrades to existing facilities – submitted by 19 entities. The plan was approved by the grid operator’s board of managers Feb. 12.
The designated proposals range from simple facility upgrades to new extra-high-voltage transmission lines and grid-enhancing technologies, including advanced conductors and the first underground high-voltage-direct-current (HVDC) line within PJM’s footprint.
The cost of the projects across multiple zones will be shared across the PJM grid.
In Virginia, Dominion Energy plans to build a $2.3-billion, 525-kV underground “backbone” transmission line in Virginia to be online by June 2032. In addition, two HVDC converter stations will be built at each end of a 185-mile line for $1.5 billion.
Those projects are designed to provide 3,000 megawatts to Loudoun County in northern Virginia.
The plan also includes a $1.7-billion transmission line across 221 miles of central Pennsylvania proposed by NextEra Energy Transmission and Exelon – also to serve data center demand.
“PJM also clarified that siting, routing and regulatory processes, as well as construction, take a long time, and PJM needs the plan to be ready and advanced for the forecasted conditions proactively rather than bringing needed development late, which introduces impediments to development and reliability risks to stakeholders,” the grid operator said.
The PJM grid has been under stress and in 2025, suffered multiple “criteria violations,” including thermal overloads, voltage violations, and violations linked to the closure of old plants.
“The large number of violations seen in the 2025 … were driven by numerous factors. The west-to-east transmission backbone is heavily loaded driven by large load increases in the Western Region, the Dominion zone and eastern PJM footprint as well as reduction in generation capacity in eastern PJM due to planned generation delays or potential future retirements,” the grid operator said.
The grid is facing a 10-gigawatt (GW) to 28-GW load increase between 2030 and 2032 compared to the operator’s 2024 projection and has been struggling with rising energy prices.
PJM’s December 2025 capacity auction reached a record $333.44 per megawatt-day, hitting a price cap put in place after protests from governors of states in the network.
In 2024, transmission costs totaled $13.9 billion, or 32% of total wholesale power costs of $43.6 billion for the year, according the latest full year reported by the grid’s independent market monitor, Monitoring Analytics, LLC.
Congested or constrained transmission lines can “create significant price increases,” Monitoring Analytics said in its 2024 State of the Market report.
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