Fix America’s Power Grid by Giving People Power

Angst over America’s biggest power grid has gone existential. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Laura Swett’s recent speech to the PJM grid, delivered like a menacing eulogy, posited that “perhaps [PJM] simply has grown too big to function.”

It came soon after the chief executive of American Electric Power Co., which owns several utilities that participate in PJM, mused about potentially withdrawing them. Meanwhile, Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, one of PJM’s larger states, recently wrote to utilities informing them that their model is “broken.” PJM itself notes in a recent white paper that “the current situation is not tenable.”