DOE orders PJM to dispatch reserves ahead of a forecast heat spike
Victoria Shinder2 min readThe US Department of Energy issued an emergency order on 17 September 2026 directing PJM Interconnection to dispatch specified resources and order their operation as needed to maintain reliability across the Mid-Atlantic, ahead of forecast hot weather and planned transmission outages.
The order also authorises PJM to direct backup generation resources to operate as a last resort before declaring an Energy Emergency Alert (EEA) 3, or during one, and permits PJM to call on its transmission owners and electric distribution companies to implement it. It followed an application PJM submitted on 16 September, and ran from issuance on 17 September through 18 September — a single day.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright framed it around seasonal solar output, saying that at the end of summer and into early fall there are fewer daylight hours and therefore less solar generation, and citing warnings from the North American Electric Reliability Corporation about late-summer temperature spikes where reliable sources have been retired early. DOE estimates that more than 35 GW of unused backup generation remains available nationwide.
What it means
The operational content sits in the EEA 3 clause, and it is worth separating from the politics of the accompanying statement. EEA 3 is the point at which an operator cannot meet demand with available resources and firm load shedding comes into view. Authorising backup generation before that declaration moves a set of resources — typically behind-the-meter diesel and gas that normally runs only for its owner — from last resort into the reserve stack a step earlier.
That is a meaningful change in what the operator can reach, and it comes with the trade that those units are the least clean and least monitored generation on the system. A one-day window is the right shape for that trade; a standing authorisation would not be.
The figure to treat carefully is the 35 GW. It is a departmental estimate of backup generation existing nationwide, not a measurement of what is interconnected, permitted to run, or reachable by any particular operator during a particular hour. Those are different quantities, and the distance between them is exactly what an emergency order is negotiating.