White House seeks emergency power auction for largest US electric grid

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/white-house-seeks-emergency-power-auction-largest-us-electric-grid-2026-01-16/

19•bikenaga•3w ago

Comments

hermanzegerman•3w ago

It's funny how politicians across the world can suddenly fix things when an election is coming up and they fear losing it

cyanydeez•3w ago

huh? 1 paragraph in and this is about data centers being a problem.

This is about "oh, problems are solved when there's a bunch of lobbiests paid to solve it"

hermanzegerman•2w ago

Then read further

The White House is seeking caps on the amount existing power plants can charge in the PJM capacity market.

The agreement would also require data centers to pay for the new generation built on their behalf – whether they show up and use the power or not - rather than buying up existing power. The concept is called BYOG, or "bring your own generation."

londons_explore•3w ago

So loads of new demand is pushhing the price sky high....

And the fix is to... Cap the price?

Did nobody do economics 101?

lucas_membrane•3w ago

In the USA, the history of assuming that the national government will support power to the people the way FDR, PWA, BPA, TVA, ... did has given the national government quite a bit of leverage to keep the states in line. I'm figuring that this auction will be used by the executive branch to buy power at a high price in the auction, then allocate it to areas in need according to a plan approved by the powers that be. If they do a good job, nothing to see here. YMMV.

bigbadfeline•3w ago

> Did nobody do economics 101?

They did but didn't like it. Simulating activity buys them time, after the blackouts, it will be like "See Econ 101, capping the price doesn't work, let's uncap it quick."

Round and round we go.

yial•3w ago

https://archive.ph/wScVL

rapjr9•3w ago

Is the root of the problem buying more power or building more grid?

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