• THE GRID
The Third Emergency
At 11:59 p.m. on Tuesday, a two-part emergency order took effect across 13 states.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright signed it hours earlier. One part lets PJM force data centers to switch to diesel backup. Any site with 50 megawatts of load or more must flip within 15 minutes.
The other waives clean-air limits on power plants so they can run at full output.
PJM is the largest grid in America. It stretches from D.C. to Chicago. It serves 67 million people. And this week, it forecast a peak that could break a record set before AI data centers existed.
|
Forecast Peak
166,304 MW
|
Prior Record (2006)
165,563 MW
|
|
|
DOE Orders in 2026
3
|
PJM Coverage
67M People
|
|
Your Download Link Will Expire
If you still haven't downloaded my free "Safe Trade Options Formula" guide...
...please take a few seconds and download it right now before your new temporary download link expires.
I eventually plan to charge money for this training, so do yourself a favor and download it now...
That way, no matter what it costs in the future, you'll have a free copy on your computer.
Make sense?
One line in Wright's order stood out:
"Currently, there are tens of gigawatts of readily available backup generation that have remained largely untapped."
Tens of gigawatts. Idle. Behind server farms. Diesel generators built for rare outages — now the last defense before rolling blackouts.
This is the third backup-generation emergency order for PJM in 2026. January was a cold snap. May was a maintenance crunch. Now a heat wave. The triggers change. The result is the same: not enough power.
On Thursday, Con Edison asked New York customers to limit A/C between 2 and 10 p.m. Maryland utilities told people to cook outside and raise thermostats to 78°. PJM issued a load management alert — it may have to pay customers to cut usage.
In July. In America.
The cause is plain. Summer heat maxes out cooling load. Data centers max out server load. Both peak at the same hour. PJM was sized for one of those. Not both.
Hospitals and 911 centers are exempt from the cutback orders. Data centers are not. That tells you where the strain lives.
And it's not just PJM. Wisconsin published a new energy assessment last week. Peak demand there will jump 40% by 2032. Three hyperscale data centers — including a new Microsoft facility — drive 72% of that spike. The state now plans 5,400 MW of new gas generation. That's more than double the 2,500 MW planned two years ago.
The emergency orders expire tomorrow night at 11:59 p.m. The strain they address does not.
The 2006 PJM record stood for 20 years. No growth in people or industry came close to touching it. And now it may fall this week. Not from more people. From more servers.
Three grid emergencies in one year isn't bad luck. It's the new normal. And the market hasn't priced it in.
While everyone was distracted by the SpaceX IPO, Elon Musk quietly started backing a NEW AI startup…
That has been called "the fastest-growing business in the history of capitalism."
Even though this has nothing to do with robots, self-driving cars, and rockets…
It's growing faster than Tesla… faster than SpaceX… and even 23 times faster than Nvidia.
• VOLTAGE
Sold Out Until 2029
You can't buy a heavy-duty gas turbine right now. Not from the biggest maker in the world. The wait list runs to 2029.
GE Vernova's Q1 tells the story. Orders surged 71% to $18.3 billion. Total backlog hit $163 billion. The company shipped 25 gas turbines in the quarter, up 32% from a year ago. Still not enough.
Why gas? Speed. A gas plant goes from permit to power in two to three years. Nuclear takes a decade. Solar needs storage. Wind needs new transmission lines. When a data center needs power fast, gas wins.
US utilities filed for nearly 24 gigawatts of new gas-fired capacity in 2025. That's up 570% from 2023. One gigawatt powers about 750,000 homes — or one large data center campus. Utilities filed for 24 of them in a single year.
But the rush comes at a cost. Building a gas plant now runs 66% more than in 2023, per BNEF. Same turbines. Same blueprints. Higher price tags across the board. Labor and materials are up. The crush of orders creates its own bottleneck.
GE Vernova raised its full-year guidance. CEO Scott Strazik says the backlog should hit 110 GW by year-end. Revenue in Q1 reached $9.3 billion, up 16%.
Every turbine they sell powers more AI. And every one takes three years to deliver.
The bottleneck in the AI boom isn't semiconductors. It's the machines that make the electricity.
• WIRED IN
Signals From the Grid
MasTec (MTZ) is up 79.7% year to date. Quanta (PWR) is up 63.8%. The S&P 500? Just 9.3%. The companies that build the grid are crushing the companies that run on it. Both reported record first quarters — MasTec posted revenue of $3.83 billion in Q1, up 34% year over year, with a backlog of $20.3 billion. Quanta hit $7.87 billion in Q1 revenue and a record $48.5 billion backlog.
They're building with parts from Eaton (ETN), which just posted a record Q1. Revenue hit $7.45 billion, up 17%. Electrical backlog grew 48% year over year. Management raised organic growth guidance to 10%, driven by data center demand. Orders in Electrical Americas surged 42%. Every transformer and switchgear Eaton ships goes into a grid that is running out of room.
One of their biggest future customers could be the merged NextEra (NEE) and Dominion (D). The $67 billion all-stock deal is working through FERC, the NRC, and multiple state commissions. Together they'd control a 130-GW large-load pipeline and have pledged $2.25 billion in customer bill credits to ease approval.
Meanwhile, batteries keep gaining ground. The U.S. installed a record 9.7 GWh of storage in Q1 2026 — up 32% from a year ago. Storage now makes up 28% of all planned new capacity this year. Second only to solar.
The builders are winning. Own the picks and shovels, not just the mines.
