Overview
Monitoring Analytics is the independent market monitor for PJM Interconnection. The role is to surveil PJM’s wholesale market for design flaws, manipulation, and structural problems, and to recommend regulatory remedies. Joe Bowring is its president and the most-quoted analyst on the AI-buildout-into-PJM story.
Key facts
- Independent Market Monitor (IMM) for PJM under OATT Attachment M; aka Market Monitoring Unit (MMU)
- President: Joe Bowring (the named voice in most AI-grid coverage)
- Files mandatory quarterly State of the Market reports to FERC, the PJM Board, PJM Management, the PJM Members Committee, and the State Commissions
- Q1 2026 SOM (May 14, 2026): names data center load growth as the primary cause of capacity-market non-competitiveness; quantifies the customer-bill incidence at $13,768,851,483 across the 2026/2027 + 2027/2028 BRAs (with Agreement-VRR cap in place); recommends a BYONG (“Bring Your Own New Generation”) market solution; explicitly opposes backstop-auction proposals that shift risk to other PJM customers Quarterly State of the Market Report for PJM Q1 2026 — Monitoring Analytics - 2026-05-14
- IMM-published companion document: “Reliability Backstop Auction Design Proposal – V4” (May 8, 2026) — the formal version of the BYONG-anchored alternative Quarterly State of the Market Report for PJM Q1 2026 — Monitoring Analytics - 2026-05-14
- Bowring on the record (Jan 2 2026): “It’s at a crisis stage right now. PJM has never been this short.” US Electric Grid Heading Toward Crisis Data Centers — Common Dreams - 2026-01-02
- IMM-on-the-record framings (Q1 2026 SOM): “Structural market power is endemic to the capacity market”; “Large data center load additions have already had a significant and irreversible impact on PJM customers”; “The market solution is to require data centers to bring their own new generation” Quarterly State of the Market Report for PJM Q1 2026 — Monitoring Analytics - 2026-05-14
Newsletter relevance
Monitoring Analytics is the cleanest primary source for the AI-grid-strain story because it is structurally adversarial to PJM (its job is to find flaws), is independent of utilities and hyperscalers, and is on the record across multiple months. Its language (“significant and irreversible”) signals that regulatory remedies will be structural, not cyclical.
Connections
- PJM Interconnection — entity it monitors
- Joe Bowring — president, most-quoted analyst
- AI Buildout Grid Constraint — the concept the firm’s reporting documents
- AI Cost Incidence — the structural problem its remedies target
Source appearances
- Quarterly State of the Market Report for PJM Q1 2026 — Monitoring Analytics - 2026-05-14 — primary regulatory document
- AI Data Center Demand 76 Percent Surge East Coast Grid — SOFX - 2026-05-15
- US Electric Grid Heading Toward Crisis Data Centers — Common Dreams - 2026-01-02
Open questions
- The Q1 2026 SOM was published; the next quarterly update lands ~August 2026 with Q2 data covering the June 2026 BRA. Worth automatic ingest on release.
- The IMM’s recommendations are formally advisory under OATT Attachment M, but they are filed contemporaneously with FERC and shape capacity-market design proceedings. The PA Gov Shapiro / Commonwealth complaint (December 30, 2024) and the resulting Agreement VRR curve are the cleanest case study of how IMM analysis flows into regulatory action.