NexPhase Advisory

The Morning Read

Thursday, July 16, 2026
01  The Bottom Line
PJM's capacity auction clearing 6.8 GW short of its reliability requirement at the price cap, while a $15B campus files in Lawrence County, tells you the same thing from two directions: the demand side has structurally outrun the supply pipeline, and the next auction will be worse before it gets better. The SoftBank federal lease exposure and Pennsylvania's new oversight law show the political risk layer is no longer theoretical. Site control and interconnection rights in constrained markets are the scarce asset; everything else is downstream of those two.
02  Signal of the Day
PJM
PJM Interconnection · 2026-07-15
PJM's 2028/29 auction clearing at the $325/MW-day cap and coming up 6,831 MW short of the reliability requirement is the number every developer, IPP, and data center power buyer in the footprint needs to internalize. The $16.4 billion total cleared value is real money flowing to capacity holders, making existing PJM interconnection rights with deliverability more valuable now than before. For buyers, bilateral contracts and self-supply are the only way to avoid exposure to a price cap that will itself be reset higher in future auctions; for developers with capacity in the queue, the market is telling them that new dispatchable capacity gets paid.
03  Market Intelligence
PJM  · 3 signals
SB Energy · 2026-07-15
The PORTS campus in Piketon sits on a federal lease in a political environment that has already paid offshore wind developers billions through the Judgment Fund to surrender similar federal leases. That is not an abstract legal theory; it is a documented precedent this administration has used repeatedly. OpenAI has not signed the lease agreement for the 10 GW campus, the 800 MW first phase is not expected online until 2028, and the site is still in demolition and foundation work four months after the groundbreaking ceremony. The combination of an unsigned anchor tenant agreement, an unbuilt asset, and a federal land position that the current Interior Department has both the legal mechanism and the demonstrated appetite to unwind makes this project's risk profile materially different from any privately held campus. Anyone underwriting power supply or interconnection capacity around Piketon should price the lease cancellation scenario explicitly, not as a tail risk but as a live scenario.
Stonebridge Associates · 2026-07-15
Fifteen billion dollars and 16 buildings on a brownfield site in Lawrence County served by Penn Power is a serious PJM load event, not a press release. Stonebridge has filed for preliminary planning consent with two townships and the county, which means the local entitlement process is real and moving. The Penn Power service territory sits in the western end of PJM, where transmission constraints and queue depth are different animals than northern Virginia, and that is both the opportunity and the risk: fewer competing interconnection requests, but also thinner transmission infrastructure and a utility with limited large-load precedent at this scale. The missing disclosure is IT capacity, which means the actual MW ask has not been filed with PJM yet. Watch for the interconnection filing, because that is where the project becomes real or stalls. Remediation of the former American Cyanamid site adds a timeline risk that most greenfield campus projects do not carry.
Pennsylvania · 2026-07-15
Pennsylvania requiring annual energy usage reports from data centers and directing PJM to give state regulators additional demand forecast visibility is the beginning of a regulatory feedback loop that will slow approvals over time. It does not stop projects already in the queue, but it creates a new disclosure burden and, more importantly, it gives state officials the data infrastructure to justify future constraints. Developers filing in Penn Power and PPL territory should expect this reporting requirement to become a negotiating lever in local political approvals within the next two years.
MISO  · 2 signals
Cypress Creek Energy · 2026-07-15
The largest solar-plus-storage project to break ground in the US carries a Google VPPA for 100 percent of initial output, and the scale matters: 1.6 GW of solar and 2 GWh of storage at first phase, scaling to 2.5 GW and 2.9 GWh. The VPPA structure means Google is not taking delivery directly; it is buying environmental attributes and synthetic fixed-price exposure while the electrons go to the broader MISO market. Hyperscaler procurement pressure at this scale is not abating, and this will not be the last gigawatt-class VPPA out of the sector this year.
Mississippi PSC · 2026-07-15
A Mississippi PSC commissioner publicly questioning whether Entergy Mississippi should remain in MISO is a credible policy threat, not a fringe position, and it is directly tied to MISO's pending transmission cost-sharing reforms. Entergy Mississippi's load sits in MISO South, which has long been a net importer of costs from MISO Midwest's build-out, and the Midwest-South transfer constraint makes the value proposition of MISO membership genuinely complicated for southern utilities. If this gets traction at the commission level, the consequences for MISO's footprint and transmission planning assumptions would be significant. Watch whether Entergy Mississippi's management responds formally, because that response will tell you whether this is a negotiating posture or a serious exit inquiry.
CAISO  · 1 signal
Avantus · 2026-07-15
A 20-year PPA with Clean Power Alliance for 200 MW solar plus 800 MWh of storage, targeting May 2029 commercial operations, is routine contract execution in the CAISO market. The domestically manufactured storage component choice is worth tracking for ITC adder exposure, but nothing about this deal changes the California storage procurement picture. Avantus continues to execute, and CPA continues to lock fixed-price offtake.
National & Policy  · 2 signals
DataBank, EdgeCore · 2026-07-15
When DataBank is reportedly being shopped at a price approaching $25 billion for a majority stake and EdgeCore is simultaneously in market, you are watching the private infrastructure capital cycle crest. DigitalBridge and Partners Group are not selling because demand is weak; they are selling because valuations are at levels where the exit math works for their fund cycles. The more important signal for developers and IPPs is what these transactions imply about the buyer pool: pension funds, sovereign wealth, and large infrastructure funds absorbing data center operating companies at these multiples means the capital markets are still wide open for the sector, and that keeps development pipelines funded. The question that will determine whether these deals close at headline prices is power certainty: how much of each portfolio's forward capacity is contracted, and how much depends on interconnection positions that have not yet cleared.
RTO Insider / DELTA · 2026-07-15
One hundred and four large-load tariffs across 37 states means the era of a data center negotiating bespoke service agreements with each utility is effectively over. The tariff is now the instrument, and the tariff terms, cost allocation methodology, minimum load factors, and curtailment rights are where the real negotiation happens. Developers who are still focused on the headline rate and not the tariff structure are leaving risk on the table.
04  Regulatory Watch  · 8 recent & standing filingsView Filings
EL26-67-000 · PJM · cost allocation · 3 filings
FERC initiates Section 206 proceeding against PJM, all commissioners concurring separately
Filed 2026-06-18   20260618-3105 ›  ·  20260708-5011 ›  ·  20260618-3111 ›
ER26-1323-002 · SPP · large load
SPP compliance filing for conditional high-impact large load service tariff provisions
Filed 2026-07-06   20260706-5174 ›
ER26-2698-000 · NYISO · queue reform
NYISO supplemental filing on interconnection process improvements affecting queue procedures
Filed 2026-07-08   20260708-5191 ›
EL25-49-002 · PJM · large load
FERC issues rehearing/clarification order on PJM proceeding, likely large-load or cost policy matter.
Filed 2026-06-18   20260618-3103 ›
ER26-2514-000 · SPP · queue reform
FERC accepts SPP generator interconnection procedure revisions to Attachment V tariff.
Filed 2026-06-29   20260629-3054 ›
ER26-2771-000 · PJM · queue reform
FERC denied Chestnut Run Energy LLC's waiver request in PJM (ER26-2771), a process-integrity ruling on interconnection queue timing.
Filed 2026-07-02   20260702-3059 ›
EL26-68-000 · n/a · large load
Data Center Coalition intervenes, signaling major data center power policy proceeding.
Filed 2026-07-09   20260709-5248 ›
EL26-69-000 · n/a · large load
Data Center Coalition intervenes, signaling large-load policy dispute at FERC.
Filed 2026-07-09   20260709-5275 ›
The Morning Read is published weekday mornings under the NexPhase Advisory imprint, written by Chris Santiago. Two decades in utility-scale development, from site origination and land control through interconnection, offtake, and delivery to NTP. 5+ GW delivered across major U.S. ISOs and RTOs.
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