PJM Logged 145 Plant-Hours Under DOE Order 202-26-50 Before the Waiver Expires
The Department of Energy's Order No. 202-26-50 expires at the end of 16 October 2026. For four calendar days, from 13 October through today, PJM Interconnection has held Federal Power Act section 202(c) authority to dispatch the plants listed in its application even where an environmental permit or state rule would otherwise stop them, and to call on backup generation at data centers and other large loads as a last step before firm load is interrupted.
The order was signed on 12 October after PJM applied on 11 October. What the order actually did, and what the daily reports show it was used for, are different lengths of paper. Section 202(c) lets the Energy Secretary require generation, delivery or transmission when an emergency exists because of a sudden rise in demand or a shortage of energy or of facilities for generating or transmitting it. Backup units that serve critical reliability or backup needs at defence, homeland security, first-responder, air-traffic-control, hospital, 911, water or wastewater, natural-gas pipeline or gathering facilities, and similar sites, are carved out.
The 13 October compliance report lists fifteen resource lines and their run-hours: COM 936 Lincoln combustion turbines 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 each ran 4 hours. Across the two reported operating days the public compliance filings therefore show 145 plant-hours of operation under Order No. 202-26-50. DOE's CESER docket page for Order No. 202-26-50 posts PJM's original application of 11 October, an Exhibit A dated 12 October, the order itself, and then updated Exhibit A files timed at 5:17 p.m.
The order also sits against a January 22, 2026 letter from Energy Secretary Chris Wright to reliability coordinators and balancing authorities on leveraging backup generation during energy emergencies. Eighty-four plant-hours on day one and sixty-one on day two is a narrow use of a broad waiver, if the Exhibit A universe is large relative to the units that appear in the daily reports. The forecasts that justified the order were for elevated demand, a high autumn outage rate and planned transmission outages, with the BGE, PEPCO and Dominion zones and the named transfer paths as the acute points.
PJM's Capacity Advisory for 12-14 October and MISO's overlapping capacity advisory and conservative operations were part of the pre-order posture described in the application. Paragraph L makes the order effective 13 October through 16 October 2026, except for the daily reporting and related compliance duties. Until that third daily report appears, the public run-hour total from primary compliance filings is 145 plant-hours over two days, of which 14 were campus/large-load backup entries on 13 October.