en.Wedoany.com Reported - PJM Interconnection, together with plant owner Talen Energy, has jointly filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to extend the Reliability Must-Run (RMR) agreements for the Brandon Shores coal-fired power plant (1.3 GW) and the H.A. Wagner oil-fired plant (774 MW) through May 2031. Both plants are located south of Baltimore, with Brandon Shores originally scheduled to close in May 2025. The initial RMR agreement, approved by FERC in May 2025, provided Talen Energy with a fixed annual payment of $180 million to extend operations through May 2029. This latest request from PJM seeks an additional two years, with FERC required to rule by early August.
To retire Brandon Shores, a series of transmission upgrades must be completed to prevent grid instability in the Baltimore area, but progress on these projects has been severely delayed. A transmission line assigned on an emergency basis to Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE) without competitive bidding has seen its estimated cost double to approximately $1.5 billion. PJM has also expanded the list of transmission projects that must be completed before the plant can close, adding several ongoing projects, including the 67-mile, $424 million Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, a high-voltage line traversing Baltimore, Carroll, and Frederick counties. A PJM affidavit from June 2026 cited land acquisition, permitting, and supply chain bottlenecks as the primary causes of the delays.
The office of Maryland People's Counsel David Lapp, which represents utility ratepayers in regulatory proceedings, stated directly: "The other load growth is actually data center growth, and it is almost entirely located outside of Maryland." His office filed a complaint with FERC in May, alleging that PJM has illegally shifted approximately $2 billion in transmission costs driven by out-of-state data center demand onto Maryland ratepayers over the past three years. A March 2026 report from the Office of the People's Counsel indicated that Maryland residential ratepayers could face $5.4 billion in transmission facility costs between 2031 and 2036, on top of the $7.1 billion they have already paid over the past 20 years.
PJM capacity auction prices surged roughly tenfold between the 2024-2025 and 2026-2027 delivery years, settling at $329/MW-day. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) estimates that data center demand drove a 63% increase in 2025-2026 auction prices, adding $9.3 billion in capacity costs for ratepayers across the 13 states in PJM's footprint. Residential customers in western Maryland are already paying approximately $18 more per month as a result. NRDC projections show that without structural reforms, the cumulative regional impact could reach $163 billion by 2033, and by 2028, the average PJM household could pay roughly $70 more per month.
The extension of the Brandon Shores RMR agreement exacerbates this situation. Maryland's 2031 Climate Solutions Now Act requires a 60% reduction in statewide greenhouse gas emissions from 2006 levels, a target the state is already failing to meet. Extending the life of a coal-fired power plant under a ratepayer-funded contract to that same year has been described as "devastating" by Maryland Delegate Lorig Charkoudian. The FERC decision expected in August will determine whether this timeline can be maintained.
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