The $3.2 Billion Grid Hack: Piggybacking on Rust Belt Power Plants

WASHINGTON – November 10, 2026

There is a glaring disconnect between how our energy infrastructure is supposed to work and the reality playing out across the American Rust Belt. As electricity demand skyrockets—driven by a relentless boom in data centers, domestic manufacturing, and widespread electrification—the grid is effectively paralyzed by its own bureaucracy. Across the United States, more than 2,060 gigawatts of generation and storage capacity are trapped in interconnection queues, waiting years just for permission to plug in.

In the PJM Interconnection region, which manages the grid for 13 states including Ohio and Pennsylvania, a new solar farm or utility-scale battery typically languishes for over five years before it can transmit a single electron. While developers wait in this administrative purgatory, standard ratepayers are left to foot the bill for a manufactured scarcity.

But a pair of new studies funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts reveals that the solution to this crisis might be hiding in plain sight. By leveraging a mechanism known as Surplus Interconnection Service (SIS), Ohio and Pennsylvania could bypass the gridlock entirely, unlocking up to 37.5 gigawatts of new energy capacity in a fraction of the traditional timeframe. It is a rare, pragmatic hack of a broken system—one that transforms dormant industrial sites into hybrid energy hubs while sparing consumers from billions in unnecessary infrastructure costs.

The Backlog Hack

To understand the elegance of Surplus Interconnection Service, one must first understand the inefficiency of the current grid. Many power plants, particularly aging natural gas and coal facilities, operate well below their maximum potential output for most of the year. They are designed as "peaker" plants, roaring to life only during extreme summer heatwaves or winter freezes. For the other nine or ten months, their massive, ratepayer-funded connections to the broader electric grid sit largely idle.

SIS allows clean energy developers to essentially piggyback on this unused capacity. Rather than applying for a brand-new interconnection—a process that triggers years of exhaustive, system-wide engineering studies and often requires building expensive new transmission lines—a developer can co-locate a solar array or a battery storage facility at the existing fossil fuel plant. When the gas plant isn't running, the solar panels or batteries use the existing "socket" to send power to the grid.

"After decades at a plateau, U.S. electricity demand has climbed in each of the past five years and shows no sign of abating," notes Jenny Netherton, who works on The Pew Charitable Trusts' energy modernization project.

The research, conducted by Roselle LLP, SilverGreen Energy Consulting, and UC Berkeley researcher Umed Paliwal, quantifies exactly how transformative this loophole could be. Across Ohio and Pennsylvania, 14.8 gigawatts of potential new energy could be unlocked solely at power plants that operate for only a few months of the year.

Relief for Ratepayers

For the average resident, grid policy is usually an abstraction—until the monthly utility bill arrives. The PJM region is currently facing a severe capacity shortfall, a crisis that has sent market signals into a frenzy. Recent data indicates that regional generation capacity costs are set to surge exponentially, jumping from $29 to an agonizing $333 daily per megawatt of capacity.

These costs do not evaporate; they are passed directly to the consumer. When the grid requires new, sprawling transmission lines to connect far-flung renewable projects, standard households bear the brunt of those multi-million dollar infrastructure upgrades.

SIS offers a financial reprieve. Because it relies on infrastructure that is already built and paid for, it drastically reduces the capital required to bring new power online. In Ohio, where manufacturing growth is stretching power needs to the limit, researchers found the state could host up to 21 gigawatts of new resources through SIS—matching the state's projected demand growth through 2035. This would save Ohio ratepayers an estimated $1.8 billion in averted interconnection costs, translating to roughly $367 in savings per household. Moreover, these projects can be operational in as little as 12 to 18 months, providing immediate relief to a strained system.

The math is equally compelling in Pennsylvania, a state that historically serves as a massive energy exporter but is seeing its aging thermal plants operate less frequently. More than 30% of Pennsylvania's thermal generation capacity sits idle for at least nine months of the year. By utilizing SIS at these existing sites, the state could realize 16.5 gigawatts of new resources, saving consumers over $1.4 billion. To put that in perspective: Pennsylvania is currently slated to add only 1 gigawatt of new generation in 2026 through the traditional interconnection queue. SIS could multiply that output exponentially.

The Siting Solution

Beyond the economics, SIS elegantly sidesteps one of the most contentious battles in the modern energy transition: land use.

As developers rush to build utility-scale solar and wind farms, they frequently clash with rural communities. The construction of new transmission corridors often involves the threat of eminent domain, the disruption of prime agricultural land, and fierce "NIMBY" (Not In My Backyard) opposition. These local zoning fights can stall critical clean energy projects for years, pitting environmental goals against community preservation.

By contrast, SIS projects are inherently brownfield developments. They are co-located on large tracts of land already owned by existing power plants—sites that have long been permitted and zoned for heavy industrial use. Adding a battery storage facility next to an existing smokestack generates virtually no new land-use friction. It is a strategy of recycling our industrial footprint, accelerating the energy transition without tearing up the countryside to do it.

Navigating the Regulatory Red Tape

Of course, retrofitting the grid is never entirely frictionless. While the physical engineering of co-locating assets is straightforward, the regulatory and operational frameworks remain complex.

Integrating new solar and battery storage with existing thermal plant infrastructure requires precise coordination regarding operational control, dispatch priorities, and liability. If a grid disturbance occurs, clear contractual agreements must dictate who is responsible.

At the federal level, progress is being made. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Orders 845 and 2023 mandated that transmission providers like PJM allow developers to use surplus interconnection rights. In compliance, PJM implemented tariff revisions that took effect in March 2025, expanding SIS access—particularly for energy storage—earlier in the development cycle. However, FERC's intense scrutiny late last year over PJM's co-located load rules, particularly concerning massive data centers attempting to bypass standard grid tolls, proves that regulators are still fiercely guarding against undue cost-shifting.

The true bottleneck now lies at the state level. PJM's rules permit SIS, but state utility regulators must actively champion it. The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUCO) and the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (PA PUC) have the authority to mandate that utilities evaluate SIS potential in their Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs), following legislative precedents recently set in Indiana and Virginia. State agencies can also streamline local permitting for hybrid facilities and align workforce development programs to support these rapid-deployment projects.

The gigawatts of power waiting in the shadows of Ohio and Pennsylvania's aging power plants represent a rare alignment of economic, environmental, and pragmatic interests. The infrastructure is already there, the technology is ready, and the consumers are desperate for rate relief; all that remains is for state policymakers to recognize the socket hiding in plain sight and finally plug it in.