Two later PJM BRAs printed at the FERC collar ($333.44 then $325); RM26-4 landed as six §206 show-cause orders, not a NOPR or final rule; CEG still books the nuclear capacity premium while arguing DC load is a peak problem solved with stranded gen + batteries + DR.

Autoresearch: PJM post-$329 BRA prints, FERC RM26-4 form, and whether CEG nuclear still takes the capacity premium

Generated by /autoresearch on 2026-09-19. Synthesized across 3 rounds from 12 web pages (plus a Grokipedia primer), anchored by the Grokipedia entry for PJM Interconnection. See Provenance. Treat as raw material — review before promoting into a project or thread. Context: vault/projects/stock-market Research-only pass: filed outside the vault at /tmp/explore-batch2/pjm-nuclear.md. No buy / sell / size language.

Summary

PJM has printed two Base Residual Auctions after the 2026/27 result. The 2027/28 BRA (17 December 2025) cleared at the FERC-approved cap of $333.44/MW-day UCAP across the footprint (Vistra 8-K; PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026). The 2028/29 BRA (14 July 2026) cleared at the next collar cap of $325/MW-day UCAP — 2.5% below the prior cap, still at the ceiling, and 6,831 MW short of the reliability requirement (PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026; CEG 8-K, 14 July 2026). The 2029/30 BRA is scheduled for December 2026 and has not printed (PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026).

FERC's end-June RM26-4 commitment did not land as a NOPR or a final rule. On 18 June 2026 the Commission issued six region-specific FPA §206 show-cause orders (PJM is EL26-67-000) "rather than a proposed final rule at this time" (Commissioner LaCerte concurrence; FERC fact sheet).

2026 primaries still show CEG nuclear as the capacity-premium cash beneficiary: Q2 adjusted operating EPS $2.55, attributed in the 10-Q to higher capacity revenues (and on the call, explicitly to higher PJM capacity prices), and the 2028/29 8-K cleared 15,700 MW of nuclear at $325 versus 3,175 MW fossil/other (CEG 10-Q; CEG IR, 6 August 2026; Fool transcript). The same management tape says data-center growth is a peak-hour problem to be met with existing stranded generation plus batteries, demand response, and peakers — not with a wave of new nuclear megawatts (Fool transcript). Those two statements sit together; they do not cancel.

Findings

Two later BRA prints, both at the FERC collar

Constellation's 22 July 2025 8-K reported that every CEG PJM plant cleared the 2026–2027 auction at $329/MW-day (CEG rounds the two-decimal PJM print), with 15,550 MW nuclear and 2,475 MW fossil/other, effective 1 June 2026 (CEG 8-K, 22 July 2025). This pass did not successfully fetch a PJM HTML page that restates the commonly cited $329.17 two-decimal figure; CEG's contemporaneous 8-K is the fetched first-party print.

A later auction has printed. On 17 December 2025 Vistra reported that the 2027/2028 PJM capacity auction cleared its entire 10,566.1 MW book at $333.44/MW-day in every listed zone (RTO, COMED, DEOK, EMAAC, MAAC, ATSI, DOM) (Vistra 8-K, 17 December 2025). The same day CEG reported that every CEG PJM plant cleared 2027–2028 at $333/MW-day (again rounded), 15,525 MW nuclear and 2,425 MW fossil/other, effective 1 June 2027 (CEG 8-K, 17 December 2025). PJM's own 14 July 2026 news release treats $333.44/MW-day UCAP as the 2027/2028 footprint cap (PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026).

A still later auction has printed. On 14 July 2026 PJM announced the 2028/2029 BRA: 138,318 MW UCAP of generation and demand response, plus 10,864 MW FRR, for 149,182 MW total; the entire footprint cleared at the FERC-approved cap of $325/MW-day UCAP, 2.5% below the 2027/2028 cap; cleared supply × price = $16.4 billion; 6,831 MW short of the reliability requirement (the second consecutive shortfall); reserve margin 14.7%; only 525 MW UCAP of new generation and uprates cleared (PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026). CEG's same-day 8-K matches: every CEG PJM plant cleared; 15,700 MW nuclear and 3,175 MW fossil/other at $325; effective 1 June 2028 (CEG 8-K, 14 July 2026). CEG's Q2 10-Q restates that "the entire RTO, including all submitted CEG units, cleared at the price cap of $325/MW-day" and that FERC in April 2026 accepted an extension of the RPM collar — "a price cap of approximately $325/MW-day and a price floor of approximately $175/MW-day" — through the 2028/2029 and 2029/2030 BRAs (CEG 10-Q).

The next BRA, for 2029/2030, "is scheduled for December as PJM works toward returning to its three-year-forward planning cycle" (PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026). No 2029/2030 clearing price was found on any fetched page as of 19 September 2026.

The collar matters for how to read the prints. PJM says the $325 result is the third consecutive collared auction, coordinated with the 13 PJM-state governors and FERC, and that the cap is calculated from the accredited capacity of the PJM reference resource (PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026). A print at the cap is not an uncapped market-clearing price.

RM26-4 did not become a NOPR or a final rule

On 16 April 2026 FERC said it would "take action by June 2026" on Docket RM26-4-000, the DOE §403 Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on large-load interconnection (data centers and other large loads) (FERC, 16 April 2026). That page describes an ANOPR, not a NOPR and not a final rule.

The June action arrived on 18 June 2026 as six tailored FPA §206 show-cause orders to PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO-NE, and NYISO plus their transmission owners — "to advance the goals of the Secretary of Energy's advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANOPR)," not to adopt it as a rule (FERC fact sheet, 18 June 2026). Recipients have 60 days to justify existing tariffs or propose changes, and 30 days to file a resource-adequacy information report. The five reform categories are: efficient study processes (including alternative transmission technologies); cost-shift prevention and cost transparency; co-location / behind-the-meter generation; new transmission services for flexible large loads; and joint study of generation serving electrically proximate or co-located large loads (FERC fact sheet, 18 June 2026).

Commissioner LaCerte's concurrence is the cleanest form statement in the fetched record: "The collective voices in the ANOPR comments have shaped our decision to issue six separate individually tailored and region-specific show cause orders, rather than a proposed final rule at this time" (LaCerte concurrence, EL26-71-000). He cites the RM26-4 ANOPR (23 October 2025) and the 16 April 2026 Intent-to-Act order (195 FERC ¶ 61,045) as the predicate, not as a rule that closed (LaCerte concurrence).

The PJM order itself is 195 FERC ¶ 61,211, Docket EL26-67-000, issued 18 June 2026. It institutes a §206 show-cause proceeding, directs a 60-day response (justify the tariff or propose a replacement) and a 30-day informational report on generation adequacy for large loads, and "strongly encourage[s]" parallel FPA §205 filings. It recites the RM26-4 ANOPR and the April Intent-to-Act order; it does not attach a NOPR or a final rule (EL26-67-000 PDF). PJM peak-load growth of 32 GW from 2024 to 2030, of which 30 GW is projected from data centers, is in that order's recitation (EL26-67-000 PDF).

CEG's Q2 10-Q treats the June action as a further step in the separate PJM co-location show-cause (December 2025 order creating IT NITS plus firm/non-firm contract-demand services), not as an RM26-4 rule: "In June 2026, FERC ruled on a number of issues presented in the co-location paper hearing… FERC pressed PJM to implement changes to accommodate co-located load prior to PJM's proposed June 2029 effective date" (CEG 10-Q). Dominguez on the Q2 call described the same June package as FERC ordering every RTO to justify large-load interconnection tariffs or propose revisions — again a show-cause, not a rule (Fool transcript).

A fetch of the FERC RM26-4 hub page (https://ferc.gov/rm26-4) timed out, so this pass cannot independently confirm from that HTML whether the ANOPR docket was formally left open. Nothing in the fetched FERC pages says RM26-4 was converted to a NOPR, issued as a final rule, or terminated.

Nuclear still takes the capacity-premium cash; batteries/DR are the peak-hour overlay

CEG's 6 August 2026 IR release: GAAP EPS $1.42 and adjusted operating EPS $2.55 for Q2 2026 (up from $1.91 adjusted in Q2 2025); full-year adjusted guidance raised to $11.50–$12.50; 920 MW of additional long-term PPAs "for clean, reliable nuclear generation," 15–20 year duration, start 2029–2032, including a 176 MW Walmart deal that enables a 30 MW Dresden uprate; nuclear fleet 44,160 GWh in the quarter at a 93.0% capacity factor (ex-Salem/STP); Crane CIR waiver plus NRC fuel-license amendment toward a 2027 restart (CEG IR, 6 August 2026). The IR's earnings-driver sentence is "the addition of Calpine and favorable market and portfolio conditions, partially offset by unfavorable nuclear outages" — it does not itself name PJM capacity prices (CEG IR, 6 August 2026).

The 10-Q does. The Q2 year-over-year net-income variance is partially offset by "Favorable net market and portfolio conditions primarily driven by higher capacity revenues partially offset by lower CMC program revenue" plus Calpine (CEG 10-Q). Average Q2 2026 capacity reference prices: PJM EMAAC $289.67/MW-day versus $125.71 a year earlier; PJM ComEd $289.67 versus $109.25 (CEG 10-Q). Those Q2 realized prices sit between the 2025/26 and 2026/27 delivery-year levels; they are not BRA prints. CFO Shane Smith on the 6 August call named the three Q2 drivers as "accretion from Calpine, higher capacity prices in PJM and strong performance from our commercial business" (Fool transcript).

The 2028/29 8-K is the cleanest current picture of who collects the collar: 15,700 of 18,875 MW cleared at ownership is nuclear (CEG 8-K, 14 July 2026). That is a larger nuclear share than CEG's 2026/27 (15,550 / 18,025) or 2027/28 (15,525 / 17,950) 8-Ks, after Calpine added fossil/other megawatts that then get partly stripped by required divestitures (CEG 8-K, 22 July 2025; CEG 8-K, 17 December 2025; CEG 10-Q).

PJM's 2028/29 cleared-plus-FRR mix is not a nuclear-majority stack: 46% natural gas, 20% nuclear, 18% coal, 5% demand response, 4% hydro, 2% wind, 2% oil, 1% solar. Gas rose 5,639 MW UCAP (accreditation, coal-to-gas conversions, and returning units); coal fell 2,941 MW; solar rose 651 MW from new or planned resources; new generation and uprates were only 525 MW UCAP (PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026). Existing nuclear remains a large, high-accreditation slice of what cleared at $325; it is not the resource adding megawatts.

Management's Q2 tape is the stranded-generation / batteries / DR argument, and it is about load integration, not about who collects today's capacity payment. Dominguez: unused capacity exists "in generation and in the wires grid over 99% of the hours of the year. We have a peak capacity concern, not an energy concern." The "secret sauce" is to "deal with a handful of peak hours" and "harvest the stranded capacity that exists every other hour." Peaks "could be managed with batteries, with demand response, with peaking resources"; the remaining hours are "where our fleet becomes extraordinarily valuable because it's a fixed-price, clean energy resource that they could count on for decades" (Fool transcript). Eggers: CEG's interconnection-queue megawatts are "a full range anywhere from uprates on the baseload side, the batteries to peakers" (Fool transcript). Dominguez also says more efficient use of existing generation "puts downward pressure on capacity prices over time" because the "missing money" shrinks when energy and ancillary revenues rise (Fool transcript). That is a first-party qualifier on the durability of the collar print, not a claim that batteries have already displaced CEG's nuclear capacity revenues.

The 920 MW of new nuclear PPAs sit on the same side of the ledger as the capacity premium: they are contracted offtake from existing (and 30 MW of uprated) nuclear, 15–20 years, start 2029–2032, not a new-build nuclear program (CEG IR, 6 August 2026; CEG 10-Q). Fetched primaries do not state an 18.5-year average duration.

PJM's own 2028/29 release points at the same overlay: Connect and Manage for flexible large loads, a Reliability Backstop Procurement aimed at the near-term shortfall, bilateral matching of large-load customers to "new generation, storage or demand-side resources," and "maximizing the performance and availability of existing generation" (PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026). That is the system operator describing how incremental DC megawatts get served. It is not a statement that nuclear has lost the $325 collar payment on the existing fleet.

Contradictions and open questions

Collar versus uncapped price. Every fetched 2027/28 and 2028/29 print is at the FERC cap. PJM's official BRA-report PDFs (search-indexed; not fetched — pjm.com PDFs are off the *.gov whitelist) are reported elsewhere as carrying a much higher no-cap simulation; this pass does not treat those PDF figures as fetched and does not invent them.
$329 versus $329.17. CEG's 2026/27 8-K reports $329 (CEG 8-K, 22 July 2025). The two-decimal $329.17 figure was not restated on any HTML page this pass successfully fetched. Do not collapse them.
RM26-4 docket status after 18 June. Fetched FERC pages show the June instrument was six §206 orders, not a NOPR or final rule. Whether RM26-4-000 remains open for later national action was not confirmed from https://ferc.gov/rm26-4 (timeout). Law-firm commentary in search results claims the ANOPR was left open; that is not a fetched FERC primary.
Q2 realized $289.67 versus BRA caps of $329 / $333.44 / $325. The 10-Q table is a period-average of overlapping delivery years and is not an auction print (CEG 10-Q).
Has batteries/DR displaced new nuclear demand? Fetched 2026 primaries say no on cash (nuclear still clears the bulk of CEG's PJM book at the cap; 920 MW of nuclear PPAs still getting signed) and yes on the incremental-MW path (peaks via batteries/DR/peakers/backup gens; energy hours via existing stranded generation; PJM mix 46% gas / 20% nuclear / 5% DR; 525 MW of new build/uprates in 2028/29). Those are different questions.
2029/30 BRA has not printed. PJM says December (PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026).
Grokipedia is encyclopedic history of the RTO and does not cover 2025–2026 BRA prints or RM26-4 (Grokipedia: PJM Interconnection).

Provenance

Rounds run: 3 of 3 (full)

Sub-questions by round:

Round 1 (broad survey):

Has PJM published an official BRA / capacity-auction clearing price after 2026/27 $329.17 (2027/28, 2028/29, or later)?
What is FERC RM26-4-000 status after the end-June 2026 commitment — NOPR, final rule, or still pending?
What do CEG 2026 IR / SEC primaries say about capacity-price earnings vs serving DC load with stranded generation + batteries + DR?
Has PJM or FERC published a post-June 2026 large-load or capacity-market update that changes the nuclear-beneficiary read?

Round 2 (drill-down):

Confirm the 2027/28 BRA print and whether any 2029/30 result exists — targeting the remaining auction-sequence gap.
Get CEG first-party language on stranded generation / batteries / DR vs new nuclear — targeting the beneficiary question.
Confirm whether RM26-4 was terminated, left open, or later converted to a NOPR after the June 18 §206 orders.

Round 3 (resolve remaining uncertainty):

Fetch official PJM HTML for 2028/29 (and the $333.44 prior-cap restatement) after the first Inside Lines attempt timed out.
Fetch an independent SEC primary for the $333.44 two-decimal 2027/28 print (Vistra 8-K).
Fetch the PJM §206 order PDF on ferc.gov to confirm the instrument is not a NOPR/final rule.
Fetch the Q2 2026 earnings-call transcript for the stranded-gen / batteries / DR quotes that the IR release omits.

Anchor source (Grokipedia, fetched before round 1):

PJM Interconnection — 3,017 chars extracted via _lib/grokipedia.py (source: api, 216 citations) — RTO definition, footprint, ~183 GW of capacity, markets for energy/capacity/ancillary services. Historical; no 2025–2026 BRA prints and no RM26-4.

URLs fetched (12 successful, 3 failed):

Round 1:

FERC fact sheet, 18 June 2026 — official — six §206 show-cause orders; 60-day / 30-day clocks; five reform categories; names PJM among the six RTOs.
Commissioner LaCerte concurrence, EL26-71-000 — official — "rather than a proposed final rule at this time"; RM26-4 cited as the ANOPR predicate.
FERC, 16 April 2026 — intent to act on RM26-4 — official — June 2026 action commitment on the ANOPR.
Constellation Reports Second Quarter 2026 Results — official IR — $2.55 adj. EPS; $11.50–$12.50 guide; 920 MW nuclear PPAs (15–20y); Crane; 93.0% CF.
CEG 8-K, 14 July 2026 — official SEC — 2028/29 cleared volumes; $325; 15,700 MW nuclear / 3,175 MW other.

Round 2:

CEG 8-K, 17 December 2025 — official SEC — 2027/28 cleared volumes; CEG-rounded $333; 15,525 MW nuclear.
CEG Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 — official SEC — higher capacity revenues as a Q2 driver; EMAAC/ComEd $289.67; 920 MW PPAs; $325 2028/29 restatement; April 2026 collar extension; June co-location order.
~~[Failed: https://insidelines.pjm.com/pjm-capacity-auction-procures-138318-mw-of-generation-resources-as-work-continues-to-address-growing-electricity-demand/]~~ — timeout (retried successfully in round 3).
~~[Failed: https://insidelines.pjm.com/pjm-auction-procures-134479-mw-of-generation-resources/]~~ — timeout; 2027/28 two-decimal print recovered via Vistra 8-K + the 2028/29 Inside Lines restatement.
~~[Failed: https://ferc.gov/rm26-4]~~ — timeout; RM26-4 form recovered from the fact sheet, LaCerte concurrence, April 16 page, and EL26-67-000 PDF.

Round 3:

PJM Inside Lines, 14 July 2026 — official PJM HTML — 2028/29 $325 cap; $333.44 prior cap; 138,318 MW; 6,831 MW short; 46/20/18/5 mix; 525 MW new; 2029/30 scheduled December.
Vistra 8-K, 17 December 2025 — official SEC — 2027/28 $333.44 in every listed zone.
FERC EL26-67-000, 195 FERC ¶ 61,211 (PDF) — official, PDF source, *.gov whitelist — PJM §206 show-cause; ANOPR recited; no NOPR/final rule attached; 32 GW / 30 GW DC load-growth recitation.
Motley Fool CEG Q2 2026 transcript — earnings-transcript reprint — Smith on PJM capacity prices as a Q2 EPS driver; Dominguez/Eggers on stranded capacity, batteries, DR, peakers.
CEG 8-K, 22 July 2025 — official SEC — 2026/27 CEG-rounded $329; 15,550 MW nuclear.

Not fetched (off-whitelist PDF, noted for the audit log):

https://www.pjm.com/-/media/DotCom/markets-ops/rpm/rpm-auction-info/2027-2028/2027-2028-bra-report.pdf
https://www.pjm.com/-/media/DotCom/markets-ops/rpm/rpm-auction-info/2028-2029/2028-2029-bra-results-report.pdf
https://www.pjm.com/-/media/DotCom/about-pjm/newsroom/2026-releases/20260714-pjm-capacity-auction-procures-138318-mw-of-generation-resources.pdf

Search indexed those PDFs. Per skill rules they were not fetched (pjm.com is not *.gov). Load-bearing prints above are taken only from fetched HTML / *.gov PDF / SEC HTML.

SOURCE_RELIABILITY.md notes: www.sec.gov Reliable (prefer browser-UA if WebFetch 403s; this pass's SEC HTML fetches succeeded). www.federalregister.gov Hard-blocked — not used; FERC HTML + ferc.gov PDF used instead. pjm.com, insidelines.pjm.com, www.ferc.gov, www.constellationenergy.com were not pre-listed; FERC and CEG IR HTML succeeded; first Inside Lines attempts timed out (Periodic-failure candidate); retry succeeded. www.fool.com already Reliable as an earnings-transcript reprint.

Tools used: WebSearch, WebFetch, _lib/grokipedia.py fetch (Grokipedia JSON API). No --include-x. Generated: 2026-09-19 20:45 UTC