PJM Presents Preliminary Congestion in 2024/25 Base Case

PJM’s Nick Dumitriu presented the Transmission Expansion Advisory Committee with the preliminary 2029 congestion results in the 2024/25 Base Case, which had previously been unable to offer a workable solution without the transmission upgrades included in the first window of the 2024 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan (RTEP).

The final base case and congestion drivers are expected to be published in March, with a long-term market efficiency project proposal window open between April and July. The TEAC and PJM Board of Managers may review any project recommendations to come out of that process toward the end of 2025.

The 345-kV Green Acre-P9701 West and Douglas-Francisco lines saw the greatest amount of annual congestion at $164 million and $107 million, respectively. Around 35 lines were identified with congestion exceeding $1 million annually.

RTEP Changes Include Doubling of Tx Costs for Brandon Shores Deactivation

The network upgrades necessary to allow the deactivation of Talen Energy’s Brandon Shores coal-fired generator outside Baltimore have doubled in cost from $738.83 million to more than $1.513 billion, PJM Director of Transmission Planning Sami Abdulsalam said.

Part of the increase came as more detailed engineering studies were conducted and assessments were made on site conditions. Abdulsalam said an example of that can be seen with the plan to build a new Batavia Road substation, which was originally planned to be air-insulated but has been upgraded to a gas-insulated substation due to limited land and wetlands on site.

Quotes received through the conceptual design phase also tended to be lower than those received once competitive bidding opened and constructability reviews were conducted with the aim of improving right of way access and limiting the potential for cost overruns. Abdulsalam said labor costs for both construction and engineering have increased since the project was announced.

The cost of transmission upgrades to interconnect New Jersey’s offshore wind projects under the State Agreement Approach has decreased by $8.2 million with the removal of prebuild extension work, such as duct banks, for four high-voltage direct current lines to each of the converter station areas for the generators.

FirstEnergy has canceled the $37.5 million Whippany–Montville 230-kV line included in PJM’s package of transmission upgrades in the first window for the 2025 RTEP, citing “routing and permitting issues.” The upgrade was intended to resolve the potential for two 230-kV circuits in the Montville area to be lost and cause a voltage collapse dropping over 300 MW of load. FirstEnergy informed PJM that an alternative project should be identified and included in the RTEP.

Supplemental Projects

Dominion presented a $110 million project to construct a new substation, named Duval, to serve over 100 MW of residential and commercial load forecast in Chesterfield County. The $30 million substation would be connected to the Midlothian substation with four 230-kV lines for $80 million. The project has an in-service date of Jan. 1, 2028, and is in the engineering phase.

Dominion presented a pair of projects to replace two 230/115/13.2-kV transformer banks at its Landstown facility due to their age and maintenance issues. The projects would cost $9.86 million, with one expected to come online in December 2025 and the second a year later.

Dominion presented a series of projects to build a string of four substations networked between its planned Cirrus, Potato Run and Oak Green substations to serve new data center load in the Culpepper area.

At one end, the $14.3 million, six-breaker ring Palomino substation would be connected to the Cirrus substation with two 230-kV lines for $24.2 million. Palomino would be connected to the $14.3 million Chandler substation with double circuit 230-kV lines for $6.5 million.

The similarly priced McDevitt substation would be connected to Chandler with double circuit 230-kV lines for $5.5 million. The last facility, Mt. Pony, would cost $11.6 million and would be connected to McDevitt with double circuit 230-kV lines for $28.2 million. Mt. Pony would also connect to both Potato Run and Oak Green with 230-kV lines for $100 million in transmission and $40.8 million in upgrades at the existing sites. Each component has an in-service date in the second quarter of 2028 and is in the conceptual phase.

FirstEnergy presented two projects totaling $14.8 million to replace 230/34.5-kV transformers at its Glen Gardner and Larrabee substations, along with circuit breakers and disconnect switches to address maintenance issues associated with the end of life for the transformers. The Glen Gardner transformer would be installed by May 1, 2025, while the transformer at Larrabee would go in-service on April 12, 2027.