PJM’s 2028/2029 capacity auction produced total revenues of $16,407,949,025, and without the forecast growth in data center load those revenues would have been $10,675,483,688, the Independent Market Monitor for PJM wrote in an October 30 analysis. The monitor said the inclusion of forecast data center load increased total revenues by $5,732,465,337, or 53.7 percent.
By our arithmetic, that forecast-driven increase equals 34.9% of the auction’s actual total revenues.
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The key insight: The Independent Market Monitor for PJM calculated that forecast data center load growth of 16,436 MW raised the 2028/2029 capacity auction’s total revenues by $5,732,465,337, from a modeled $10,675,483,688 to the actual $16,407,949,025. That increase equals 34.9% of actual revenues, by our arithmetic. The monitor describes the data center effect as an increase in costs to PJM customers.
The auction, held from June 30 to July 7, 2026, set capacity payments for the 2028/2029 delivery year, according to the report by Monitoring Analytics, the monitor. PJM’s 2026 load forecast used for the auction included forecast total data center load of 21,470 MW, of which 5,034 MW was the forecast load from existing data centers and 16,436 MW was the forecast increase, the report says.
In its Scenario 3, the monitor kept existing data center load but removed the 16,436 MW of forecast new and increased data center load, which gave revenues of $10,675,483,688. Removing all 21,470 MW of existing and forecast data center load (Scenario 4) gave $10,140,129,902, an increase from data center load of $6,267,819,123, or 61.8 percent, the report says.
The monitor states that “The results reported by the MMU are not forecasts or predictions of the outcome of any future BRA” and that its “quantitative results are estimates”.
PJM 2028/2029 capacity auction total revenues, as modeled by the Independent Market Monitor for PJM (Monitoring Analytics, 30 Oct 2026): actual $16.41 billion (Scenario 0); $10.68 billion without the 16,436 MW of forecast data center load growth (Scenario 3); $10.14 billion without all 21,470 MW of existing and forecast data center load (Scenario 4). The $5.73 billion difference is 34.9% of actual revenues by our arithmetic.
Who Pays
The monitor frames the increase as a cost to other customers. “The increase in costs to PJM customers in the 2028/2029 BRA as a result of data center demand was $6,267,819,123 (Scenario 4)”, the report says, and the total across the last four auctions was $29,368,774,465.
The report’s conclusion: “data center load growth is the primary reason for recent and expected capacity market conditions, including total forecast load growth, the tight supply and demand balance, the significant shortfall in cleared capacity, and high prices”. It adds that “There would have been no shortfall but for the forecast data center load”.
The Monitor’s Remedy
The monitor recommends requiring new data center load to bring its own new generation. If adopted, “the impact of the uncertain forecast of data center load on other customers would be limited or eliminated”, the report says, although the impact of embedded data center load would remain unless explicitly addressed.
The next auction, for 2029/2030, is scheduled for December 9 to December 15, 2026, according to the report, which says an additional impact of approximately the same level as the last four auctions is expected from it.
As we read the report, the monitor separates two effects: forecast data center growth (Scenario 3) and all data center load, existing plus forecast (Scenario 4), and the report gives $5,732,465,337 and $6,267,819,123 respectively.
As we read the numbers, the report’s figure for forecast growth alone, $5,732,465,337, is close to its figure for all data center load, $6,267,819,123, though the report says scenario results are not strictly additive.
As we read the remedy, the monitor’s recommendation that new data center load bring its own new generation is the same direction as the bring-your-own-power purchases covered in our earlier pieces, though the report does not discuss any company.
The Independent Market Monitor for PJM, 30 October 2026
“There would have been no shortfall but for the forecast data center load”
Three Implications
FOR PJM CUSTOMERS The monitor puts the increase in costs to PJM customers from data center load at $29,368,774,465 across the last four capacity auctions, the report says.
FOR DATA CENTER BUILDERS The monitor recommends requiring new data center load to bring its own new generation, which it says would limit or eliminate the impact of the uncertain forecast on other customers.
FOR THE NEXT AUCTION The 2029/2030 auction is scheduled for December 9 to December 15, 2026, and the report says an additional impact of approximately the same level as the last four auctions is expected from it.
The analysis says: “The job of any operator, investor, or builder is to know which layer they are operating inside and which layer the binding constraint is rotating toward next.”
As we read it, the monitor’s report places part of that constraint in the capacity market, where forecast data center demand set prices. The analysis does not discuss PJM.
What Is Not Established
The monitor’s figures are modeled counterfactuals using the auction’s rules and its stated assumptions, and the report says scenario results are not strictly additive. The report gives the change in total capacity market revenues; it does not translate that change into a per-household bill figure in the pages we read. The share of the forecast data center load attributable to AI workloads, as distinct from other data center uses, is not given in the report.
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PJM’s market monitor calculated that forecast growth in data center load raised the 2028/2029 capacity auction’s total revenues by $5,732,465,337, from a modeled $10,675,483,688 to the actual $16,407,949,025. The monitor calls the increase a cost to other PJM customers and recommends that new data center load bring its own new generation.
A note on sourcing. All figures and quotations are from the Independent Market Monitor for PJM’s report “Analysis of the 2028/2029 RPM Base Residual Auction, Part A” (Monitoring Analytics, 30 October 2026), pages 1 to 10, read in full. The comparison of $5.73 billion with actual revenues of $16.41 billion is our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
