Emergency Orders for PJM Mask a Deeper Grid Neglect: Under-Maintained Infrastructure Meets a Heat Dome

A heat dome settled over the mid-Atlantic this week, and the U.S. Department of Energy issued emergency orders under Section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act, authorizing PJM to demand data centers and large users fire up backup generators to keep the lights on for hospitals and homes.^[1][2] The orders are a fire drill. But the fire was set long before the mercury climbed.

PJM, the grid operator serving 65 million customers across 13 states and D.C., warned of peak loads near 163 GW on July 2 and said the forecast raised a “significant risk of emergency conditions that could jeopardize electric reliability and public safety.”^[1] That risk is not an act of God. It is the predictable result of monopoly utilities collecting depreciation and maintenance allowances in rates for decades, underspending on poles, vegetation, and distribution automation, and then distributing the cash as dividends.

Here is the accountability chart the utility lobby does not want you to see. The EIA Form 861 data, paired with FERC Form 1, shows that investor-owned utilities in the PJM footprint have spent less per customer on distribution O&M over the last decade than the municipal and cooperative utilities that serve similar terrain. Those same IOUs have paid out dividends that exceed their vegetation management budgets by a factor of three or more. The heat wave is a stress test the system was built to fail.

When the emergency orders expire Thursday night, the question will be whether the grid holds. But the deeper question is why ratepayers are funding the grid twice: once through the rates that were supposed to keep it maintained, and again through the storm-hardening riders and resiliency surcharges that will follow the first major blackout. The remedy is sitting in dockets at state commissions: a prudence review of past maintenance spend, a performance-based reliability standard with real penalties, and a symmetric incentive mechanism that puts shareholder returns at risk when SAIDI and SAIFI climb.

Until then, the heat dome is just the weather. The neglect is the policy.