Several state consumer advocates filed a complaint at FERC alleging PJM’s capacity market is failing to mitigate market power, overestimating future load and producing high clearing prices that generation owners cannot act on. 

Panels during the OPSI Annual Meeting discussed the 2025/26 capacity auction yielding an eightfold jump in prices, as well as possible changes to the subsequent auction.

The second leg of the Independent Market Monitor's analysis on PJM's 2025/26 Base Residual Auction looked at the impact of not counting reliability-must-run resources as capacity, paired with several other factors.

PJM has proposed changes to the demand response availability window, which determines when the curtailment capability is evaluated as accredited capacity and expected to be online for dispatch.

PJM presented how the planning parameters for the 2026/27 Base Residual Auction affected the variable resource rate curve, which intersects with supply and demand to determine auction clearing prices.

The Independent Market Monitor has argued energy efficiency can’t participate as a capacity resource because the load reductions already are accounted for in PJM’s load forecast.

Consumers and electric distributors in PJM opposed a proposal to revise two financial parameters used to calculate the cost of new entry input to the 2027/28 Base Residual Auction.

Generation owners say the increase in PJM capacity prices is the signal they need to invest in new development, while consumer advocates say the backlogged interconnection queue could limit the ability for market participants to react.