Jason Stanek, executive director of governmental relations for PJM, told the Prince George’s County task force that rapid data‑center growth is a major driver of recent increases in electricity demand and that Maryland faces an urgent reliability challenge unless new generation, storage or transmission is brought online in the near term.

“We are the largest power grid in North America,” Stanek said, describing PJM as the region’s operator and planner for high‑voltage transmission. He said PJM serves about 67 million customers across 13 states and that Maryland accounts for “just over 6,000,000” customers inside that footprint.

Stanek said PJM estimates data centers currently account for about 4% of the power crossing the control room and that figure could triple to roughly 12% over the next four years as new projects come online. He highlighted two structural problems: retirements of thermal plants in Maryland and rapid load growth from new large, 24/7 customers (data centers), building electrification and electric vehicle adoption. He said fleet‑scale construction of new generation is not keeping pace with load — and cited a mid‑2027 timeframe when PJM has warned of potential voltage collapse in Maryland if transmission and generation projects do not materialize.

Stanek reviewed PJM’s planning tools and constraints: the interconnection queue (applications to connect generation and storage), the capacity market (a forward “insurance” payment to ensure resources are available when needed), and the time and permitting required to build new plants or high‑voltage lines. He said Maryland imports roughly 40% of its electricity on an average day and that several large thermal units have retired or are at risk of retirement. He noted independent reports from NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) that place Maryland in a higher‑risk category for supply shortfalls under extreme conditions.

Stanek also discussed the types of resources PJM sees in the interconnection queue (a preponderance of renewables and battery storage) and the practical barriers to bringing them online quickly: financing, supply‑chain lead times for large equipment, siting and permitting delays, and community opposition to local generation or transmission projects. He said battery storage can complement renewables and provide capacity but at a high upfront cost; Stanek gave an example cost estimate of around $1 billion for a large battery installation on the order of several hundred megawatts.

On control and notification procedures, Stanek emphasized that PJM does not directly interconnect individual customers at the distribution level. Utilities (for example, Pepco in Maryland, Dominion in Virginia) receive interconnection requests; PJM coordinates on bulk‑system planning and reliability. If a large customer seeks distribution service, PJM may be informed through its utility contacts, but PJM does not itself perform local distribution hook‑ups or “turn on” customers.

Stanek said possible responses include faster development of diverse generation types (including nuclear, thermal and renewables), increased energy efficiency and demand response programs, more battery storage, and siting or “bring your own generation” (BYOG) arrangements for very large customers. He urged state and local officials to weigh the tradeoffs between economic development and system reliability and to act on transmission and generation permitting and siting to avoid reliability shortfalls and rising energy prices. He also noted federal and state policymakers are engaging on the issue and that planning decisions need coordinated action across jurisdictions.

The PJM briefing framed the problem as regional and time‑sensitive: large, continuous loads arriving before equivalent supply and transmission can be permitted and constructed will raise reliability risk and upward pressure on prices unless policymakers, utilities and developers coordinate rapidly.