The PJM Capacity Charge, Explained — April 2026

How the auction sets the price

PJM Interconnection — the grid operator for all or part of 13 states plus the District of Columbia — runs a Base Residual Auction (BRA) for each delivery year, a June 1 to May 31 window. Generators offer their capacity; PJM buys enough to cover the forecast peak plus a reserve margin; and the auction clears at a price in dollars per megawatt-day, published when the results come out — months to years before the delivery year begins.

Utilities and suppliers in the footprint must buy their customers' share of that capacity at the cleared price, and they pass the cost through — as its own line item on some bills, folded into the supply rate on others. That pass-through is how an auction result becomes a household cost, and why a cleared auction is a schedule of increases (or decreases) you can read years ahead.

The four priced delivery years

RTO-wide Base Residual Auction clearing prices, published by PJM Interconnection. Several utility zones cleared higher than the RTO-wide price, so every figure here is a floor, not a ceiling. Note the prices can fall as well as rise between delivery years.

Which states pay it

The capacity charge reaches customers across the PJM footprint — 14 jurisdictions today:

• Delaware
• District of Columbia
• Illinois*
• Indiana*
• Kentucky*
• Maryland
• Michigan*
• New Jersey
• North Carolina*
• Ohio
• Pennsylvania
• Tennessee*
• Virginia
• West Virginia

* Only part of the state is in PJM (Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, North Carolina, Tennessee), so the charge applies to the PJM-served territory only — not to the whole state's usage.

Each state page shows the locked capacity lines at that state's own average usage, alongside its 12-month price history.

From $/MW-day to cents on your bill

An auction price in $/MW-day is not directly comparable to the ¢/kWh you pay, so we convert it with one documented assumption: a 60% system load factor — average demand as a fraction of peak. One MW of peak capacity then serves 8,760 h × 60% of megawatt-hours per year, and dividing dollars-per-MW-year by those MWh (then by 10) yields cents per kWh.

Worked on the next increment still ahead of the April 2026 data month — the 2026/2027 delivery year versus the 2025/2026 price already inside bills:

For a household using 1,000 kWh a month (an illustrative figure, not an average), that is ≈+$4.10/month — from the capacity step alone, before anything fuel or delivery costs do.

Increment source: PJM auction results · 2025-07-22. Measured against the 2025/2026 baseline ($269.92/MW-day) already in April 2026 bills — an increase whose delivery year has already started is never counted again. Later priced years (2027/2028, 2028/2029) are measured against the same baseline; your state page lists every line.

The same conversion, applied state by state at each state's own average usage, drives the ranking in our 2027 study (full methodology on the page) and every locked line on the state pages.

What it means for your bill

Enter your state and monthly bill: if you are in the PJM footprint, the calculator turns the locked auction prices above into dollars per month at your own usage — every line sourced and dated. Nothing you type is stored.

Keep going

• Why is my electric bill so high? — the full usage-vs-price diagnosis, with the national numbers.
• Why did my electric bill double? — the realistic causes of a true 2x jump, in checking order.