DEV will only consider proposals for facilities located within PJM territory, not including those located in the state of Virginia.

All electrical output from the facilities will be delivered to the PJM Dominion Transmission Zone. Facilities that achieved a commercial operations date (COD) after October 1, 2021, and facilities under construction that achieve COD prior to the end of calendar year 2035 are eligible.

All participating bidders must register by submitting an Intent to Bid Form and an executed confidentiality agreement by August 30. The proposal submission deadline is September 30.

The Intent to Bid Form, CA, and other additional information on the RFP can also be found on the company’s website. 

This week, Virginia Electric and Power Company, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dominion Energy, agreed to acquire the Kitty Hawk North Wind offshore wind lease and associated developments from Avangrid for approximately $160 million, including a payment of roughly $3,000 per acre for the nearly 40,000-acre lease.

If approved by regulators and constructed, the former Kitty Hawk North Wind site, which will be known as CVOW-South, would connect to the company’s transmission grid and have a capacity of 800 MW. Avangrid retains the ownership and associated rights to Kitty Hawk South, and says it will continue the development of the area, which can potentially deliver up to 2.4 GW to North Carolina, Virginia, or other states or private companies. After receipt of necessary approvals from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the City of Virginia Beach, Dominion Energy and Avangrid expect to close the transaction in the fourth quarter of 2024.

In 2023, the use of coal-fired generation in PJM fell to 34% of capacity. Yet coal generators were dispatched less frequently last year, contributing 14% of PJM’s generation, while making up 18% of its generating capacity.

By comparison, in 2013, the capacity factor of coal-fired power in the market was 56%, when coal made up 44% of the market’s generation and 38% of its capacity, EIA said.

PJM is the largest wholesale electricity market in the nation and includes all or parts of Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Operating costs of resources are significant factors for PJM and other wholesale electricity markets to determine which plants will run. How much the plant is called on affects operator decisions to keep coal-fired plants open. Other factors influencing dispatch and retirement decisions include local demand, wholesale prices, fuel supply contracts, maintenance costs and debt service.

Competitive pressure from other energy sources, particularly natural gas, has significantly reduced generation from PJM’s coal fleet, increasing retirements. Since 2013, operators have retired about 34 gigawatts (GW) of coal capacity in PJM and switched about 2 GW of coal capacity to other energy sources, mostly natural gas.

Although PJM still has the most independent power producer (IPP) coal capacity in the U.S. (17.6 GW), IPP coal plants accounted for most of the retired coal capacity in PJM since 2013, about 24 GW. As a result, the generation from IPP coal in PJM has fallen more than the generation from regulated facilities, which unlike IPPs, operate with cost recovery that tends to lower financial risk.

In 2023, 11 coal-fired power plants generated over three-quarters of the region’s coal power, operating an average of 330 days a year with only three week-long shutdowns, EIA said. In contrast, the other 22 PJM coal plants operated 175 days on average, with nine shutdowns lasting about a month each.

Coal-fired units, designed for steady-state operation, face higher maintenance costs from frequent startups and shutdowns, influencing their operating strategies and competitiveness in the PJM day-ahead market. Consequently, coal plants might not be selected to operate when competing with other energy sources.

Coal remains PJM’s third-largest energy source, following natural gas and nuclear. However, competitive pressures from natural gas and renewables are leading to planned retirements of nearly 20% of PJM’s coal capacity by 2028. The remaining coal plants will likely continue to show varied run times.

All this is not to say older fossil-fired units within PJM could be retired as soon as possible.

In January PJM asked Talen Energy to delay the retirement of two units at the fossil-fired Herbert A. Wagner Generating Station in Maryland until transmission upgrades are in service.

PJM cited concerns about reliability impacts the retirement of Wagner Units 3 and 4 would cause.

In October, Talen Energy told PJM it planned to retire the 834 MW Wagner plant, which consists of three oil-fired units and a natural gas combustion turbine unit, as of June 1, 2025, citing environmental permitting and economic reasons.

But PJM is urging Talen to wait to retire Units 3 and 4 until the 2028 timeframe, when it said the transmission upgrades would be completed. According to the RTO, these upgrades were part of a solution identified to address reliability violations following the announced retirement of the adjacent 1,295 MW Brandon Shores facility, also owned by Talen and also requested to deactivate on June 1, 2025.

Temperatures across the region fell on December 23 and lasted into the morning of December 25 with record lows set in some areas.

PJM said in a preliminary report that it was “conservative” in developing operating plans for December 23. It said its forecast load was 126,968 MW and that it called for 155,750 MW in operating capacity for the day.

“Based on generator availability data submitted to PJM, we believed we had almost 29 GW of reserve capacity available to absorb load and generation contingencies and to support our neighboring systems.”

But, as reserves were called on, “a significant” portion of the fleet “failed to perform.”

By the evening of December 23, some 34,500 MW of capacity was unavailable across the region. That grew to around 46,000 MW by mid-morning on December 24.

PJM said that “over 92% of all outages were reported to us with less than an hour’s notice or with no notice at all.” At the depths of the shortfall, more than 23% of the generating capacity in PJM was unavailable.

Data showed that plant equipment and fuel supply issues made up the majority of outages over that period.

Forced outages included 32,473 MW of natural gas, 7,562 MW of coal, and 5,917 MW of nuclear, oil, solar, wind, and so on as of December 24.

In addition for forced outages, some 6,000 MW of steam generating capacity was called on but was not available. “The vast majority of these resources were gas-fired resources,” PJM said.

Pumped hydro storage generation also suffered as the high rates of generator outages limited PJM’s ability to replenish resources prior to the morning peak on December 24.

All totaled, PJM said it faced around 57,000 MW of generator unavailability for the morning peak on December 24.

PJM said it is conducting a full analysis of the December performance issues and that its findings could be available in April.

The M501JAC gas turbine in transit to Illinois is the first of two that Mitsubishi Power’s Savannah Machinery Works is manufacturing for the project and will be the first M501JAC installed in North America, said Mitsubishi Power. The Jackson Generation project’s combined-cycle power plant will be dispatched into the PJM regional transmission organization.

When the plant enters commercial service in 2022, it will be one of the world’s most fuel-efficient natural gas power plants, offering among the lowest carbon emissions of any combined-cycle plant, said the company, adding that it will produce 65 percent less carbon dioxide than a legacy coal-fired power plant. Because the plant is designed to enable more uptake of renewable power, the carbon reduction will be even greater when the plant is combined with renewables. The plant will be able to cycle quickly to meet fluctuating energy demands. It also will incorporate best available control technology to minimize emissions.

The JAC gas turbine’s fuel flexibility – an integral part of Mitsubishi Power’s J-Series combustion system – will enable the plant to use locally available fuel with higher ethane content, significantly improving project economics. The fuel flexibility combined with high efficiency will ultimately reduce electricity cost for consumers.

Introduced nearly a decade ago, the J-Series gas turbines, which are Mitsubishi Power’s largest and most advanced, deliver an unmatched combination of 99.6 percent reliability and greater than 64 percent efficiency. The fleet has logged more than 1 million operating hours globally, said Mitsubishi.

Like its twin, the second turbine for J-POWER USA’s Jackson Generation plant is being manufactured at Mitsubishi Power’s Savannah Machinery Works. The facility opened in 2010 and today manufactures gas turbine parts, provides steam turbine services, and manufactures advanced fuel-efficient gas turbines. The facility employs more than 180 people.

“Shipping the first M501JAC manufactured in America for the J-POWER USA project in America’s heartland is a significant milestone,” said Paul Browning, President and CEO of Mitsubishi Power Americas. “Our highly trained team of professionals in Savannah is yet another reason Mitsubishi Power is a world leader in the electric power sector. Not only will our turbines enable Jackson Generation to provide efficient, reliable and environmentally responsible electricity to consumers, but they also will help the plant support deployment of even more renewable energy resources. That is a Change in Power.”