PJM Governance Reform: Delaware Public Advocate Calls for Greater Consumer Voice
Posted on August 17, 2026
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) invited Delaware Public Advocate, Jameson Tweedie, to participate as a panelist at FERC’s technical conference on reforming PJM’s governance and stakeholder process on July 23, 2026. The technical conference stems from FERC’s concern that PJM is not adequately addressing the challenges of large load growth and building new power generation.
In addition to participating in a panel focused on potential reforms to PJM’s stakeholder process, Jameson filed a pre-filed statement (available here) and a brief summary of proposed reforms to PJM (available here) to improve its governance and rise to the challenges of this moment. As stated in the pre-filed statement, Delaware is doing everything in its power to establish robust policy to address data centers and other large energy use facilities, and to protect residential and small business customers from those impacts – but it needs a regional grid operator who is as well:
“DE DPA and our colleagues have been focused on the fundamental concern of the states and the federal government that new large load customers bear the additional costs they impose on the system and do not shift costs to existing customers, particularly residential customers. Delaware, at both the state and regional level, is doing everything in its authority to meet the Statement of Principles – improving load forecasting, allocating costs to new large loads, ensuring generation is built to match new large loads within Delaware, preparing a large load tariff, and fully engaging with PJM’s stakeholder process.
And yet, Delaware – and the other PJM states – cannot succeed without a regional transmission organization that operates with customer affordability and the goals of the States in mind, treating the entities that represent those States as partners in its decision-making process. The current challenge of extreme load growth from data centers has brought into plain view that PJM’s stakeholder process and its decision-making do not do so.”
During his live comments at the technical conference, Jameson emphasized that PJM’s decision-making is structured to have very limited consideration of the impacts on customers, and that he was the only consumer advocate in any of the panels at the technical conference.
“I think it’s noteworthy to think about the role we have at PJM. We have an incredibly small voice, even though [the consumer advocates] represent the interests of all 67 million consumers in the region. […] The consumer advocates have 14 votes, that’s 1.3%. So, the representatives of all the interests of consumers has less votes than many of the other members in this process. And even in sector weighting voting ,[…] we have 1/3rd of a sector, which is one of the 5 sectors.“
He also criticized PJM’s lack of transparency and the lack of confidence that creates with the public. In response to a comment by FERC Commissioner LaCerte calling PJM “a secret society”, Jameson commented,
Jameson emphasized the need to embed a public interest mission directly into PJM’s governing documents.
“It is to firmly and clearly establish[]public [interest] in PJM’s mission and in its [operating documents] and having that operationalized through what PJM does both in its board and through the stakeholder process. So, we’ve [heard] a lot about expanded board authority today and [it] may be necessary. […] But that needs to come with transparency and a clear obligation to the public interest in what it [PJM] does.”
PJM has seen a significant rise in electric demand, in part due to the growing presence of hyperscale datacenters within the region. Recent capacity auctions (PJM’s market to ensure sufficient power generation) have fallen short of PJM’s reliability threshold for the first time in its history. The rapid rise in demand from large energy use facilities, like data centers, has led to a dramatic spike (1000% over two years) rise in the price of the capacity market and an increase in the costs of wholesale electricity, despite failing to bring enough new power generation. Meanwhile, delays in PJM’s interconnection queue have contributed to that failure for enough new generation to be built in a timely manner.
The technical conference included keynote speakers and multiple panels. The first panel tackled the mechanics of PJM governance, an increased role for state officials within PJM’s processes, Federal Power Act filing rights at FERC, and amendments to PJM’s governing documents. The second panel, which was divided into two groups of speakers, focused on possible reforms to PJM’s stakeholder process to speed up and improve decision-making.
Delaware Public Advocate Jameson Tweedie recently spoke before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), advocating for meaningful PJM reform and a stronger voice for consumers in the decisions that impact their electric bills.
Watch his remarks below to hear how the Delaware Public Advocate is pushing for greater transparency, accountability, and consumer representation in our regional energy market.