
PJM Board Approves $11.8BN Transmission Expansion Plan
PJM Board Approves $11.8BN Transmission Expansion Plan
By Ethan Howland Of UtilityDive
The PJM Interconnection’s board last week approved $11.8 billion in baseline transmission projects, with Dominion Energy’s Virginia utility landing roughly $4.8 billion in those projects.
The projects are part of PJM’s 2025 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan Window 1, which is designed to bolster grid reliability that is strained by accelerated load growth in multiple areas across its Mid-Atlantic and Midwest footprint.
The projects are also needed to handle new generation in southern Virginia, future generation in western PJM, delays to New Jersey offshore wind projects and increased regional flows toward the eastern parts of PJM’s footprint, the grid operator said Friday.
PJM will monitor load and generation in its footprint to make sure needed transmission development is progressing in a timely manner, the grid operator said in its board-approved plan.
DataBank’s IAD4 data center under construction in Ashburn, Va
“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.
Meanwhile, transmission costs are making up a growing share of the price of wholesale electricity in PJM.
In 2024, transmission contributed $17.71/MWh to the cost of wholesale power in PJM, up 23%, or 5.8% a year, from $14.40/MWh in 2022, according to reports from Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s market monitor.
Transmission costs totaled $13.9 billion, or 32% of total wholesale costs of $43.6 billion, in 2024, the last full year of Monitoring Analytics’ reporting. Energy costs made up nearly 59% of the cost of wholesale power that year and capacity accounted for 6.6% of the total.
As part of PJM’s transmission expansion plan, Dominion Energy Virginia intends to build a $2.3-billion, 525-kV underground “backbone” transmission line in Virginia. The project, set to be online by June 2032, also calls for building two high-voltage direct current converter stations at each end of the 185-mile line for about $1.5 billion.
The project is designed to deliver 3,000 MW into Loudoun County in northern Virginia, the area with the most data center capacity in the world.
Like other multi-zone projects in the RTEP, the costs of the project will be shared across PJM’s footprint.
The just-approved plan also includes a $1.7-billion transmission line across central Pennsylvania proposed by NextEra Energy Transmission and Exelon. The project was opposed by Pennsylvania’s Office of Consumer Advocate, which argued that there were less expensive alternatives to the project.
The project addresses system-wide, structural reliability needs in PJM’s northeastern region that cannot be met with incremental upgrades or “terminal-only” solutions, NextEra and Exelon said in a Jan. 29 letter to PJM’s board.
“PJM’s own analyses and the convergence of independent developer proposals, demonstrates that new high-voltage backbone infrastructure is required to maintain reliable service under plausible future conditions,” the companies said. The project is slated to be operating by June 2031.
The transmission plan includes a $1.1 billion project in central Ohio proposed by Grid Growth Ventures, a joint venture between Transource Energy — a partnership between American Electric Power and Evergy — and FirstEnergy Transmission. The project includes 300 miles of 765-kV lines.
Under the plan, PPL Electric will build transmission projects totaling about $580 million, while Exelon subsidiaries Commonwealth Edison and Potomac Electric Power Co. will build projects totaling about $276 million and $292 million, respectively.
PJM’s RTEPs for 2024 and 2023 included $5.9 billion and $6.6 billion in baseline projects.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 02/19/2026 - 09:50

Blue Owl shopped debt for a CoreWeave data center. Lenders weren't sold.
Bloomberg/Getty Images
Blue Owl Capital failed to secure financing for a $4 billion data center project in Pennsylvania.
One lender said the lack of interest was due to CoreWeave's creditworthiness.
AI data center investments face financing challenges due to concerns about credit risk.
Blue Owl Capital, a leading investor in the data center boom, was unable to arrange financing for a $4 billion data center it is co-developing in Pennsylvania after pitching lenders to help bankroll the project in recent months.
The facility, 80 miles west of Philadelphia in the city of Lancaster, will be occupied by CoreWeave, a provider of artificial intelligence cloud computing services that has become a closely watched name in the AI race for its rapid expansion — and the billions of dollars of high-interest-rate debt it has taken on to fuel that growth.
An executive who arranges debt for major data center deals told Business Insider that the lack of interest in the Lancaster project was due to growing caution among lenders and investors about taking on sizable exposures to AI players with less-than-sterling credit.
CoreWeave has a below-investment-grade rating of B+, according to S&P Global Ratings.
"We saw it. We passed," a senior executive at a large specialty lender told Business Insider.
The financing executive and the lender did not want to be identified because they were speaking about an industry name they may seek to do business with.
A spokesman for Blue Owl said that the company had "considered" third-party financing for the Lancaster project "as we would with any transaction as we explore alternatives before choosing the most attractive path forward."
The spokesman added that the project, which he said is already under construction, "is fully funded, on time, and on budget."
It is unclear whether Blue Owl has been funding construction entirely from its own capital. If Blue Owl is unable to raise debt for the Lancaster development, it could be on the hook for a potentially huge outlay of cash to pay for the data center's construction.
The situation shows the complications and risks involved in financing the massive buildout of infrastructure for AI computing.
Brennan Hawken, an equity analyst at BMO Capital Markets who covers Blue Owl, said that difficulties to raise debt for the Lancaster project would raise concern.
"I'm not familiar with this deal, but if there is a struggle to find the debt financing, that's a bit of a red flag that I would want to drill into," Hawken said.
Business Insider previously reported that major banks had recent difficulty selling off pieces of $38 billion of debt to finance the construction of two data center campuses that will be anchored by Oracle. Banks often sell pieces of such large commitments to other lenders to spread risk and also reap a quick profit.
The slowdown in interest in participating in that financing was due to worries about Oracle's enormous AI spending and whether the tech company's credit rating could be impacted by those outlays. Oracle has since sought to calm the lending market, announcing that it would raise up to $50 billion of cash from stock and bond offerings in order to "maintain a solid investment-grade balance sheet."
One of the boom's most creative financiers
Last summer, CoreWeave announced it would lease 100 megawatts of initial capacity at the Lancaster data center and potentially expand its commitment to 300 megawatts. The company said it would pour up to $6 billion into the project to equip it with chips and other cloud infrastructure.
A month later, in August, Chirisa Technology Parks announced it would partner with Blue Owl and Machine Investment Group to develop the project. The partnership said it would provide $4 billion of funding, an amount separate from CoreWeave's investment, to support the construction of the project's data center facilities.
In the fall, Blue Owl began shopping the development to potential lenders, a person familiar with that effort said.
Blue Owl has been one of the most creative financial architects of the data center building boom. Last year, it structured a deal to partner with Meta in the ownership of a large data center campus that Meta will build and operate in Louisiana. Blue Owl utilized Meta's strong credit to raise $27.3 billion of investment-grade corporate bonds against its share of the project's equity, proceeds that will be used to help pay for construction, according to S&P.
Blue Owl could arrange a similar type of vehicle that could attempt to tap the credit of an investment-grade customer of CoreWeave's who might use the Lancaster facility or Nvidia, the chipmaker that has purchased large stakes in CoreWeave. It could also potentially raise cash for construction debt by tapping large institutional investor clients to pool together a loan, Hawken said.
Much of the development of hyperscale data center campuses has sought to utilize the strong credit ratings and deep pockets of big-tech partners.
Fluidstack, a peer of CoreWeave's, announced a deal last year to lease a 168-megawatt data center in Colorado City, Texas, which will be built by the crypto mining firm Cipher. Google, Fluidstack's tenant for the project, said it would guarantee about half of the $3 billion due under the 10-year lease. Fluidstack signed another similar-sized lease in December with the data center builder TeraWulf that will also provide "investment-grade credit support."
Read the original article on Business Insider

Which US States Are Seeing Incomes Rise The Fastest (And Slowest)
Which US States Are Seeing Incomes Rise The Fastest (And Slowest)
Since 2019, U.S. household incomes have surged - rising from $68,700 to $83,730 nationally, a 21.9% increase in just five years.
But where you live matters a lot.
While some states tracked close to the national average, others saw incomes climb at nearly double the pace, driven by booming local industries and major investment.
States like Colorado posted outsized gains, while Georgia’s expanding EV industry brought billions in investment and rising paychecks.
The map, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows which states saw the fastest growth in median household income from 2019 to 2024, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Trends in Median Income by State
Below, we show the change in median household income for all 50 U.S. states and D.C. between 2019 and 2024 using nominal figures (not adjusted for inflation):
Rank
State
Change in Median Household Income
Median Household Income 2019
Median Household Income 2024
1
Colorado
46.9%
$72,500
$106,500
2
Georgia
43.4%
$56,630
$81,210
3
Maine
36.3%
$66,550
$90,730
4
Montana
36.1%
$60,190
$81,920
5
Tennessee
34.0%
$56,630
$75,860
6
Rhode Island
31.6%
$70,150
$92,290
7
Massachusetts
29.9%
$87,710
$113,900
8
Florida
29.6%
$58,370
$75,630
9
Iowa
29.4%
$66,050
$85,480
10
Missouri
29.4%
$60,600
$78,390
11
California
28.8%
$78,100
$100,600
12
New Hampshire
28.7%
$86,900
$111,800
13
North Dakota
25.8%
$70,030
$88,080
14
Mississippi
25.0%
$44,790
$55,980
15
Ohio
24.5%
$64,660
$80,520
16
South Dakota
24.3%
$64,260
$79,850
17
Michigan
23.9%
$64,120
$79,460
18
South Carolina
23.8%
$62,030
$76,780
19
Idaho
23.7%
$65,990
$81,650
20
Utah
23.0%
$84,520
$104,000
21
Wisconsin
22.6%
$67,350
$82,560
22
New York
20.8%
$71,850
$86,830
23
Texas
20.8%
$67,440
$81,490
24
Wyoming
20.8%
$65,130
$78,680
25
New Mexico
20.8%
$53,110
$64,140
26
Oregon
20.5%
$74,410
$89,700
27
Virginia
20.2%
$81,310
$97,720
28
Kansas
19.9%
$73,150
$87,690
29
Arizona
19.9%
$70,670
$84,700
30
Arkansas
18.9%
$54,540
$64,840
31
Washington
18.3%
$82,450
$97,500
32
New Jersey
18.0%
$87,730
$103,500
33
Nebraska
17.9%
$73,070
$86,140
34
West Virginia
17.6%
$53,710
$63,150
35
Louisiana
17.5%
$51,710
$60,740
36
Alabama
16.7%
$56,200
$65,560
37
Alaska
16.4%
$78,390
$91,260
38
Kentucky
16.4%
$55,660
$64,790
39
Delaware
15.7%
$74,190
$85,860
40
Indiana
15.0%
$66,690
$76,710
41
Maryland
14.8%
$95,570
$109,700
42
Vermont
14.7%
$74,310
$85,260
43
Connecticut
13.7%
$87,290
$99,240
44
Nevada
13.7%
$70,910
$80,590
45
Pennsylvania
13.4%
$70,580
$80,060
46
Minnesota
13.4%
$81,430
$92,350
47
Illinois
13.2%
$74,400
$84,210
48
District of Columbia
12.6%
$93,110
$104,800
49
Hawaii
11.6%
$88,010
$98,240
50
Oklahoma
9.9%
$59,400
$65,310
51
North Carolina
9.9%
$61,160
$67,220
Colorado’s thriving tech industry helped push median income up 46.9%, the fastest rise across states.
With $165,606 in average earnings across the sector in 2023, Colorado ranked sixth-highest nationally. From software to renewable energy, employment growth has expanded by double- or even triple-digit percentages across various roles since 2018.
Georgia ranks in a close second, with median incomes climbing 43.4%. In particular, the EV and aerospace sectors are playing a key role in job creation. Since 2018, the state has seen $27.3 billion in investment across EV, aerospace, and battery manufacturers including Rivian and SK Battery America.
Maine, meanwhile, saw wages rise 36.3%. In 2024, wages across the tech sector saw the steepest jump of 11.4% while those in the construction sector saw strong gains of 8.5%. Other factors, such as its older population and tight labor market, have further boosted wages.
Falling near the middle of the pack were New York and Texas, each with wage gains of 20.8% between 2019 and 2024.
By contrast, North Carolina and Oklahoma saw only 9.9% cumulative wage growth, the weakest performance nationwide. Median household income in both states remains well below the U.S. average and still trails pre-pandemic levels.
To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on average hourly earnings by state in 2025.
Tyler Durden
Sat, 02/14/2026 - 22:45