New reporting from The Toledo Blade and The Statehouse News Bureau reinforced the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association’s (OMA) warning that PJM’s capacity market is imposing higher costs without producing meaningful new electricity supply.

PJM’s latest auction reached the federally approved price cap, yet the grid operator still fell short of its reliability target. The auction added only 525 megawatts of net new generation, the lowest total in a decade.

OMA President Ryan Augsburger told The Blade that the result reflects more than a simple supply shortage.

“This is a question of what PJM chooses to count, how high it sets the target, what it prevents from competing and how those decisions are used to justify billions of dollars in additional customer costs,” Augsburger said.

Both stories also examined Senate Bill 457, the bipartisan Electricity Forecast Integrity Act. The legislation would require independent verification and greater transparency before utility demand forecasts are used to drive capacity purchases and transmission spending.

“We need future utility load forecasts to have better transparency and better accountability,” Augsburger said.

The coverage underscores a basic problem. Customers are being required to pay maximum prices, but the market is still failing to deliver the new generation those prices are supposed to attract. 7/20/2026