PJM Bilateral Capacity Contracting: What Buyers Lose
PPL disclosures separate turbine reservations, load agreements and construction. Use those stages without treating them as equipment orders.
PJM bilateral capacity contracting belongs in an equipment forecast, but neither a capacity auction nor a bilateral agreement supplies a complete purchasing schedule. Buyers need the project’s engineering scope, approvals and supplier commitments before turning a capacity figure into an order forecast.
What PPL’s disclosure establishes
In its August 7, 2026 release, PPL reported a 31.8 GW advanced Pennsylvania data-center pipeline, more than 11 GW under signed electric service agreements and more than 6.5 GW under construction. These are different project stages, not interchangeable measures of equipment purchases.
Separately, its Invitium Energy joint venture had turbine reservation agreements exceeding 5 GW. PPL said construction and material financial commitments would wait for signed energy supply services agreements with suitable risk profiles or cost-reimbursement agreements. It described substantial investment as potential and combined-cycle operation as possible in 2031-2032. Those conditions belong beside the capacity headline. PPL Q2 release
A reservation’s payment, cancellation and delivery obligations depend on its terms. Do not assume it is costless or nonbinding; do not count it as a delivered turbine. The useful follow-up is whether the customer agreement, interconnection work and equipment commitment have advanced since the disclosure.
The capacity auction equipment demand signal nearly became conditional
The second signal came from PJM rather than from PPL, and FERC has since rejected it.
The PJM Board’s July 27, 2026 executive summary on service during periods of insufficient resource adequacy states that incremental new Large Loads relative to the forecast used for the 2028/2029 base residual auction “will be excluded from the forecast used in future RPM auctions for the 2029/2030 Delivery Year and beyond unless and until there are new supply resources offered into an RPM auction in sufficient quantity to cover the new Large Load.”
PJM filed that exclusion at FERC on August 13 in Docket ER26-3515-000, as rules to exclude Eligible New Large Load from the Variable Resource Requirement curve beginning with the 2029/2030 Delivery Year. On October 9, 2026, FERC accepted only the Large Load definition and the Large Load Registry from that filing and rejected the remaining revisions, including the forecast exclusion, as part of an integrated package. So the exclusion is not in force, and future RPM auctions are not running on it. The order gives PJM guidance on how it could modify the proposal should it seek to refile, so watch for a revised filing before assuming the auction demand curve will keep carrying incremental large load.
How to forecast large load generation procurement in PJM without an auction date
Maintain a project list alongside the regional capacity figures. For each entry, record the disclosure date, stage definition, proposed service date, interconnection status, customer obligations and named purchasing party. Do not add overlapping pipeline, contracted and construction totals together.
Treat a load agreement as evidence of a customer commitment, then look separately for the substation design, equipment schedule and procurement award. Construction is a stronger project milestone, but it does not reveal which equipment is already delivered, still on order or not yet specified. Use project-specific records to distinguish those cases before changing inventory.
What happened to the September 29 date
The backstop auction has not run. PJM filed the Reliability Backstop Procurement at FERC on July 31, 2026 in Docket ER26-3380-000, and asked for an order by no later than September 29, which is sixty days after filing. On September 29, 2026 FERC accepted it for filing, suspended it for five months to become effective February 28, 2027, subject to refund, and set a paper hearing on cost allocation, transmission owner exit rules and LSE collateral requirements. Keep that docket separate from ER26-3515-000, the Interim Resource Adequacy Service and Large Load Registry filing made two weeks later on August 13. On October 9, 2026 FERC accepted the Large Load definition and registry from that filing and rejected the Interim Resource Adequacy Service. PJM told FERC the two filings “are independent of each other.” Our read on the large-load curtailment rule works through the second one.
Watch the dates as arithmetic rather than as commitments. PJM had planned to open the offer window on Commission acceptance, targeted for September 30, and to close it three weeks later. That window did not hold on the September 29 order, and the order sets no auction date. Anyone building an equipment calendar on a fall 2026 close is building on a date the order superseded.
One correction worth carrying, because it circulates constantly: the $555 per MW-day figure attached to the backstop is not a raised price cap. It is a maximum willingness to pay applied to the MW-weighted average of levelized procurement cost across all selected offers over the full term, which PJM describes as a budget approach “not restricting Sell Offers to a hard price cap.” Individual offers can clear above it. The full backstop calendar and the shortfall arithmetic behind it sit in our utility procurement intelligence guide, and the July auction’s accredited supply and reliability shortfall are explained in our read on the auction results.
Track revised PJM filings and actual awards alongside utility project disclosures. Keep auction capacity, bilateral supply agreements and supplier orders in separate fields. A project should enter a firm equipment forecast only to the extent supported by its documented scope and commitments.
Related Reading
- PJM Capacity Auction Results: Price Cap and Supply Shortfall
- Data Center Load Pipeline vs Contracted: How to Discount It
- PJM’s Large Load Curtailment Rule
When capacity procurement moves into bilateral deals, the public record gets thinner and the people who read filings early get a longer head start than they used to. The Feeder is our free weekly brief on what changed in grid equipment supply and policy, written for the people who have to turn it into a purchase order. Sign up here.
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