May 8, 2025 - US Regional Transmission Organization (RTO) PJM Interconnection, has selected 51 projects for its fast-track interconnection review process to meet surging energy demand primarily from the data center market.

The projects selected have a combined capacity of 11.8GW. Of that, gas-fired generation makes up 69 percent, followed by battery energy storage (BESS) at 19 percent, nuclear at 12 percent, and coal at 0.1 percent.

The projects include 12 new power facilities and 39 uprates (capacity increases) at existing facilities. The 39 uprate projects have a combined capacity of 2.108GW of unforced capacity (UCAP) - the amount of energy a resource can provide during the highest system reliability risk.

The 12 new projects are expected to add 7.253GW of UCAP. Half of the 12 are natural gas projects, five are BESS projects, and one is nuclear. PJM says that it expects 90 percent of these new projects to be operational by 2030.

The projects were selected from a pool of 94 applicants, with a combined capacity of 26.6GW. The selection criteria were based on which projects provide the most value to UCAP and which have the capacity to connect to the grid the fastest. The projects are expected to come online 18 months sooner than if they went through the RTO’s standard interconnection process.

Selected projects included the advancement of 450MW in uprates at four natural gas plants in Maryland, New Jersey, and Ohio operated by Alpha Generation.

The projects will be added to PJM’s interconnection Transition Cycle 2 process, which already contains about 550 projects with a capacity of more than 50GW.

PJM, which serves all or parts of 15 states across the eastern coast of the US, is facing serious supply shortfalls across its footprint. The fast track initiative was first proposed last year, and received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in February. It followed a warning last year, that there were “significant adequacy concerns” across PJM's network due to the growth in demand from large data centers.

PJM is expected to face legal challenges to the initiative under the impression that it discriminates against proposed power projects that are in PJM's interconnection queue.

In addition, given the high proportion of natural gas projects slated for fast-track, environmental groups such as the Sierra Club and the Environmental Law & Policy Center have voiced their opposition.

In March, Sierra Club staff attorney, Megan Wachspress, said: “PJM’s RRI is a flawed, unfair proposal that clearly favors dirty, toxic gas plants, when there are plenty of renewable energy projects that have been in the queue for [more than] half a decade that can get online faster, and at a cheaper cost than that of gas plants.”

In addition to the announcement of the identity of the fast-track projects, PJM has undertaken several initiatives to facilitate faster grid connection timelines. Last month, the RTO partnered with Tapestry - a Google X moonshot project - to utilize artificial intelligence to build a unified model of the grid. In doing so, the company hopes to help everyone who plans, builds, operates, and manages the grid to optimize energy flow and bring more diverse sources of energy online. The technology is expected to be rolled out later this year.