In the largest US electricity market, volume rose only 1.7% — and one transformer explains 10.6% of the bill.
In the PJM grid — the largest Regional Transmission Organization (Regional Transmission Organization) in the United States, which operates the electricity market across thirteen states — average load consumed in the first half of 2026 rose by only 1.7%, while demand in the measured peak hour fell by between 4.6% and 6.5%, and installed capacity increased 1.4%.
Yet Congestion Cost (Congestion Cost) — what the market pays because transmission lines cannot carry cheaper electricity to where it is needed — jumped from 1,264.7 million dollars to 3,539.7 million dollars, an increase of 179.9%. Total PJM billing rose 66.4% to 59.71 billion dollars.
The key is that congestion did not become more frequent: the number of congested hours in the Day-Ahead Market (Day-Ahead Market) rose only 2.6%. Each congested hour became far more expensive, rather than more numerous. One transformer — Bedington — alone accounts for 376.5 million dollars, or 10.6% of the entire bill, a figure cited by the independent monitor itself.
On another front, the independent monitor says including data-centre loads in the last three Capacity Auctions (Capacity Auction) increased consumer bills by 20,036,670,606 dollars payable through 31 May 2029 — based on load forecasts it itself describes, verbatim and three times, as “unsubstantiated”.
In Europe, the constraint differs in kind: it is not the cost of delivering electricity but the physical availability of generation. On 12 August 2026, unavailable French nuclear capacity reached 20.4% — 13 reactors out of 57 — the largest shortfall recorded in EDF data since 2015. Three distinct mechanisms lie behind it, and the largest single cluster was not drought at all.
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