Why Community Trust Is Becoming Infrastructure's New Bottleneck

PJM Interconnection's 2025/26 Base Residual Auction — the annual capacity market that determines what generators are paid to be available — cleared at a record clearing price for the RTO (PJM RPM auction results).

A clearing price is not a forecast. It is the market's judgment of where supply and demand actually meet today — once supply-side constraints (retiring coal, slow interconnection queue throughput, transmission limits) and demand-side growth (data centers, electrification) are netted out. The Virginia load zone (DOM) sits at the steep end of both curves.

What this constrains

For Dominion ratepayers, capacity costs are a passed-through component of the bill. For data-center developers evaluating Virginia versus competing markets (Texas, Arizona, the Carolinas), the auction is a signal that the cost-of-electricity advantage has narrowed.

What to watch

• The 2026/27 auction notice and any FERC-approved demand-curve adjustments.
• New generation deactivation notices in the DOM zone.
• Whether the General Assembly's 2026 session revisits the structure of large-load tariffs.