Great piece — thank you for mapping this so clearly.
I want to add a receipt for everyone reading this from the PJM region. Because this isn’t a foreign issue or an abstract Wall Street story. This is in your backyard.
If you pay an electric bill in Northern Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, or D.C., you are already paying for what this article describes.
PJM capacity auction prices went from $28.92/MW-day to $329.17 in two years. An 833% increase. Data centers drove 63% of it. D.C. Pepco customers are paying $21 more per month right now. Baltimore Gas & Electric’s zone faces capacity fees 73% higher than the PJM average. New Jersey saw a 21.6% electricity price jump in a single year. By 2028, the average PJM household is looking at $70/month more.
And who just bought the power supply? BlackRock signed a $33.4 billion deal to take AES Corporation — headquartered in Arlington, Virginia — private. To power data centers. One of the co-investors is CalPERS, a public workers’ pension fund. Your retirement money is acquiring the grid that sets your rates.
Meanwhile the DOE projects PJM outages surging from 2.4 hours a year to 430. 2.6 million Americans rely on electricity for ventilators, dialysis machines, and oxygen concentrators. That conversation hasn’t even started.
The man buying your power grid said it himself on Bloomberg: “Markets like totalitarian governments.”
That’s Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock. He said democracy is “messy.” Now he’s buying the infrastructure you depend on to keep your lights on, your ventilator running, and your house livable in August.
Your bill is his return on investment. His words, his math, your zip code.
Thank you — and that’s the right question. Here’s the answer: there’s a live window right now with specific pressure points. Two months out.
1. The June 2026 PJM Capacity Auction
This is the most immediate fight. The next Base Residual Auction for the 2028/2029 delivery year is scheduled for June 2026.  The temporary price cap that FERC approved only covered the 2026/2027 and 2027/2028 auctions. Without the cap, the December 2025 auction would have cleared at nearly $530/MW-day — 60% higher than what ratepayers are already paying.  PJM agreed in February 2026 to seek an extension of the price cap for the next two auctions  — but that requires FERC approval and is being actively contested by generators who want the cap gone.
What to do: File public comments with FERC. You can submit comments on any open PJM-related docket at ferc.gov/ferc-online/elibrary. Multiple consumer advocates and state agencies have argued that if PJM does not extend the price cap, the June 2026 auction must be delayed until fundamental reforms are made.  Your voice in that record matters.
2. Your State Legislature — Bills Are Live Right Now
Virginia’s SB 253 would shift distribution and PJM capacity costs from residential customers to data centers drawing 25 MW or more.  New Jersey’s General Assembly passed a bill for their Bureau of Public Utilities to consider leaving PJM entirely.  Oregon became the first state to create a dedicated data center rate class. At least six states have introduced construction moratoriums, and seven states have moved to repeal or restrict data center tax incentives.  Maryland’s General Assembly passed a rate relief measure to lower utility bills by $150/year. 
What to do: Contact your state representatives and ask specifically whether they support requiring data centers to pay their own capacity costs. Find your reps at openstates.org.
3. Your Governor’s Office
Governors from Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia sent a joint letter to PJM on July 16, 2025 over grid reliability, cost increases, and data center impacts.  That letter happened because people raised hell. Your governor needs to hear from you before the June auction, specifically demanding the price cap extension and data center cost allocation reform.
4. Name the math to your neighbors.
D.C. Pepco residential customers saw their bills go up by an average of $21/month starting in June 2025 — roughly half of which is directly attributable to the spike in capacity market prices driven by data center demand.  Most people have no idea why their bill went up. Tell them.
The machine runs on silence. That’s the one resource we can cut off.
Again, a terrific fact-filled answer! Thank you, amazing person! I worked at PacifiCorp in Portland for many years, so these terms and entities are known to me.
But, I came back. This is accurate. We know we've been and are being robbed. I'm concerned about my kids and grandkids - the 401-K investment robberies!!
How long are We the People going to keep taking it? We're free people. Nothing can take that from us but our own cowardice & failure to act. We're free people & obligated to fight back. Find the American in you, stand up, & revolt.
Not to nitpick because I think I understand why some say we've moved out of capitalism into a new form of feudalism but I just dont think its true. Competition and markets are part of the system but don't define capitalism. These things existed before capitalism and can exist after, that is, if we survive. And there is no such thing a free market, so capitalism has never really demanded a necessity for one, quite the opposite actually. When one percent of people own what can be sold there is nothing free about that. Private ownership of the means of production, wage labor, fixed markets, and the infinite growth imperative are still hallmarks of our current system. Market competition means winners and losers which leads to consolidation hence the Big Three, and that is still capitalism. Capitalism does contain elements of the former feudal order in which it broke away from, just like how a future order could contain elements of capitalism.
Anyway.. I dont want to distract from the rest of this piece. I just don't want us to fall for the trap of "this isn't real capitalism" or "real capitalism has never been tried" because those stances are idealist and divorced from how the system functions in the real world.
I appreciate the rigorous pushback, and you’re right to be wary of the 'this isn't real capitalism' cop-out. But my argument isn't an ideological defense of pure capitalism. It's a forensic audit of the current mechanics.
You mentioned that market competition means 'winners and losers.' That is exactly my point: the elite class successfully lobbied to eliminate their own capacity to lose. When Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, the institutions merged the casino with the vault. They privatized the leveraged profits on the way up, and socialized the catastrophic losses onto the taxpayer on the way down. An entity that operates with infinite leverage and zero risk of structural failure isn't a capitalist enterprise participating in a market; it's a state-backed protection racket.
I use the term 'Feudalism' not as a metaphor, but as a mechanical descriptor of the endgame. Capitalism extracts via wage labor; Feudalism extracts via land and asset rent. When BlackRock and Vanguard use the captive capital from working-class 401(k)s to buy up single-family housing and essential infrastructure—forcing the very people who funded those accounts to become permanent renters—that isn't market consolidation. That is the mathematical recreation of the Lord and Serf dynamic, just digitized. They aren't winning a market; they bought the board
I do see your points. Ruling classes have always tried to avoid risk. Capitalists are no different. They prefer to merge, buy out, and/or destroy rather than compete. I see the current stage as where they've been moving to all along. Maybe myself and some of us worry about semantics too much. I dont think they do. They worry about maintaining power and control and keeping the extraction machine running and adapted to current conditions. That's all they care about.
Exactly. The semantics are the smokescreen they use to keep us arguing with each other while they quietly rewrite the rules of the casino. As long as we agree on the mechanics of the extraction machine, we're fighting the same war. Glad to have you looking at the ledger with us.
Bingo! Semantics is part of selling the various extraction schemes (predations) that become policy. Consumer distraction is part of the deflection (phones, flat screens, bread and circus events, etc. Debt peonage is another metaphor to the feudal state.
Great piece — thank you for mapping this so clearly.
I want to add a receipt for everyone reading this from the PJM region. Because this isn’t a foreign issue or an abstract Wall Street story. This is in your backyard.
If you pay an electric bill in Northern Virginia, Maryland, New Jersey, or D.C., you are already paying for what this article describes.
PJM capacity auction prices went from $28.92/MW-day to $329.17 in two years. An 833% increase. Data centers drove 63% of it. D.C. Pepco customers are paying $21 more per month right now. Baltimore Gas & Electric’s zone faces capacity fees 73% higher than the PJM average. New Jersey saw a 21.6% electricity price jump in a single year. By 2028, the average PJM household is looking at $70/month more.
And who just bought the power supply? BlackRock signed a $33.4 billion deal to take AES Corporation — headquartered in Arlington, Virginia — private. To power data centers. One of the co-investors is CalPERS, a public workers’ pension fund. Your retirement money is acquiring the grid that sets your rates.
Meanwhile the DOE projects PJM outages surging from 2.4 hours a year to 430. 2.6 million Americans rely on electricity for ventilators, dialysis machines, and oxygen concentrators. That conversation hasn’t even started.
The man buying your power grid said it himself on Bloomberg: “Markets like totalitarian governments.”
That’s Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock. He said democracy is “messy.” Now he’s buying the infrastructure you depend on to keep your lights on, your ventilator running, and your house livable in August.
Your bill is his return on investment. His words, his math, your zip code.
Good lord! Thanks for this terrifying clarity, Anthony! Now what in god’s name are going to do about it???
Thank you — and that’s the right question. Here’s the answer: there’s a live window right now with specific pressure points. Two months out.
1. The June 2026 PJM Capacity Auction
This is the most immediate fight. The next Base Residual Auction for the 2028/2029 delivery year is scheduled for June 2026.  The temporary price cap that FERC approved only covered the 2026/2027 and 2027/2028 auctions. Without the cap, the December 2025 auction would have cleared at nearly $530/MW-day — 60% higher than what ratepayers are already paying.  PJM agreed in February 2026 to seek an extension of the price cap for the next two auctions  — but that requires FERC approval and is being actively contested by generators who want the cap gone.
What to do: File public comments with FERC. You can submit comments on any open PJM-related docket at ferc.gov/ferc-online/elibrary. Multiple consumer advocates and state agencies have argued that if PJM does not extend the price cap, the June 2026 auction must be delayed until fundamental reforms are made.  Your voice in that record matters.
2. Your State Legislature — Bills Are Live Right Now
Virginia’s SB 253 would shift distribution and PJM capacity costs from residential customers to data centers drawing 25 MW or more.  New Jersey’s General Assembly passed a bill for their Bureau of Public Utilities to consider leaving PJM entirely.  Oregon became the first state to create a dedicated data center rate class. At least six states have introduced construction moratoriums, and seven states have moved to repeal or restrict data center tax incentives.  Maryland’s General Assembly passed a rate relief measure to lower utility bills by $150/year. 
What to do: Contact your state representatives and ask specifically whether they support requiring data centers to pay their own capacity costs. Find your reps at openstates.org.
3. Your Governor’s Office
Governors from Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia sent a joint letter to PJM on July 16, 2025 over grid reliability, cost increases, and data center impacts.  That letter happened because people raised hell. Your governor needs to hear from you before the June auction, specifically demanding the price cap extension and data center cost allocation reform.
4. Name the math to your neighbors.
D.C. Pepco residential customers saw their bills go up by an average of $21/month starting in June 2025 — roughly half of which is directly attributable to the spike in capacity market prices driven by data center demand.  Most people have no idea why their bill went up. Tell them.
The machine runs on silence. That’s the one resource we can cut off.
Again, a terrific fact-filled answer! Thank you, amazing person! I worked at PacifiCorp in Portland for many years, so these terms and entities are known to me.
Hard to read through this history, yet again... still, thanks for sharing; a great reminder about lobbying and who "wins".
Wow. 😲
I unsubscribed some time ago as I have too much reading to do.
But, I came back. This is accurate. We know we've been and are being robbed. I'm concerned about my kids and grandkids - the 401-K investment robberies!!
And everyone's kids and grandkids.
Shine - Corporate Junkies
https://youtu.be/XQE4tbG91LE
The smartest crooks in the room keep ripping off Main Street who keep the animal farm siphoning up the chain. Fiat money feast for the cartel.
Be safe, be vigilant, be loud….
How long are We the People going to keep taking it? We're free people. Nothing can take that from us but our own cowardice & failure to act. We're free people & obligated to fight back. Find the American in you, stand up, & revolt.
It's our country, our Right, & our freedom.
Revolution is the solution.
Not to nitpick because I think I understand why some say we've moved out of capitalism into a new form of feudalism but I just dont think its true. Competition and markets are part of the system but don't define capitalism. These things existed before capitalism and can exist after, that is, if we survive. And there is no such thing a free market, so capitalism has never really demanded a necessity for one, quite the opposite actually. When one percent of people own what can be sold there is nothing free about that. Private ownership of the means of production, wage labor, fixed markets, and the infinite growth imperative are still hallmarks of our current system. Market competition means winners and losers which leads to consolidation hence the Big Three, and that is still capitalism. Capitalism does contain elements of the former feudal order in which it broke away from, just like how a future order could contain elements of capitalism.
Anyway.. I dont want to distract from the rest of this piece. I just don't want us to fall for the trap of "this isn't real capitalism" or "real capitalism has never been tried" because those stances are idealist and divorced from how the system functions in the real world.
I appreciate the rigorous pushback, and you’re right to be wary of the 'this isn't real capitalism' cop-out. But my argument isn't an ideological defense of pure capitalism. It's a forensic audit of the current mechanics.
You mentioned that market competition means 'winners and losers.' That is exactly my point: the elite class successfully lobbied to eliminate their own capacity to lose. When Glass-Steagall was repealed in 1999, the institutions merged the casino with the vault. They privatized the leveraged profits on the way up, and socialized the catastrophic losses onto the taxpayer on the way down. An entity that operates with infinite leverage and zero risk of structural failure isn't a capitalist enterprise participating in a market; it's a state-backed protection racket.
I use the term 'Feudalism' not as a metaphor, but as a mechanical descriptor of the endgame. Capitalism extracts via wage labor; Feudalism extracts via land and asset rent. When BlackRock and Vanguard use the captive capital from working-class 401(k)s to buy up single-family housing and essential infrastructure—forcing the very people who funded those accounts to become permanent renters—that isn't market consolidation. That is the mathematical recreation of the Lord and Serf dynamic, just digitized. They aren't winning a market; they bought the board
I do see your points. Ruling classes have always tried to avoid risk. Capitalists are no different. They prefer to merge, buy out, and/or destroy rather than compete. I see the current stage as where they've been moving to all along. Maybe myself and some of us worry about semantics too much. I dont think they do. They worry about maintaining power and control and keeping the extraction machine running and adapted to current conditions. That's all they care about.
Exactly. The semantics are the smokescreen they use to keep us arguing with each other while they quietly rewrite the rules of the casino. As long as we agree on the mechanics of the extraction machine, we're fighting the same war. Glad to have you looking at the ledger with us.
Bingo! Semantics is part of selling the various extraction schemes (predations) that become policy. Consumer distraction is part of the deflection (phones, flat screens, bread and circus events, etc. Debt peonage is another metaphor to the feudal state.
Do you read Michael Hudson? 📚
True.