The national average is hiding something.

64 points separate two American grids. The EIA blended them and called it 11%. That number is fiction.  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

The week is almost done, but two numbers from this morning's EIA data are still arguing in my head. Evening. The National Average Is a Lie. One grid surged 41%. Another fell 23%. The EIA blended them and called it 11%. That number hides everything that matters. This morning I wrote about the EIA's October outlook. PJM wholesale prices up 41%. Pacific Northwest down 23%. Same country. Same year. Same report. Tonight I want to argue that the 11% national average is worse than useless. It's actively misleading. It tells you the electricity market is rising gently. It isn't. It's fracturing. PJM covers thirteen states and 67 million people. Virginia. Pennsylvania. Ohio. Michigan. New Jersey. This is where the data centers are. PJM projects 32 GW of load growth through 2030. Data centers account for 94% of it. The Pacific Northwest has hydro. It has wind. It has very few data centers. Its wholesale prices are falling. Same grid infrastructure. Same transmission physics. Different load profile. Different direction. 64-point spread PJM (+41%) vs. Pacific NW Mid-Columbia (-23%) wholesale price divergence in 2026 — EIA STEO via Reuters, Oct 6 2026 A 64-point gap between two regions of the same country is not a weather story. Weather bounces. This gap is structural. And it's widening.       Do THIS Before OpenAI Goes Public I’m sure you’ve heard the news… OpenAI has filed its S-1, targeting a potential IPO later this year at a valuation north of $1 trillion… Anthropic is reportedly going public soon after, too. Think about it… The two biggest names in AI — Anthropic and OpenAI — are about to hit the public markets very soon… Delivering unprecedented riches for early investors. But before you go rushing out buying OpenAI or Anthropic when they start trading… There’s a much better way to tap into this massive windfall… And most people have no idea it exists. Click here to find out more.       If data centers drive prices up where they land, why would they ever stop landing there? Because the fiber is there. The interconnection is there. The workforce is there. Virginia's data center corridor exists because of proximity to internet exchange points built in the 1990s. That geography doesn't move. So the load concentrates. And where it concentrates, prices rise. PJM's capacity auction cleared at $329.17 per megawatt-day for 2026-2027. That hit the FERC cap for two straight auctions. The Dominion zone in Virginia pays capacity fees 65% higher than the rest of the grid. "The relationship between load growth, fuel fundamentals, wholesale prices, infrastructure and retail costs is becoming increasingly regional and increasingly important to analyze separately." — Energy Central analysis, October 2026 That's a polite way of saying the national number is broken. And it is. A family in Portland, Oregon sees cheaper power this year. A family in Arlington, Virginia sees the opposite. The EIA puts them in the same chart and draws a gentle line. The gentle line is fiction. The capacity cost: Data centers drove $9.3 billion in capacity charges for the 2025-2026 PJM delivery year alone. That is 40% of the total auction cost. Every ratepayer in thirteen states shares that bill. The spread is widening: DTE in Michigan just reported 8 GW of data center requests. Oracle signed a nuclear deal in Wisconsin. Google locked up power in Wayne County. The load is spreading west. The price divergence follows it. The investment map: Utilities in PJM trade at premiums. Utilities in the Northwest don't. The divergence isn't just a power story. It's the trade beneath every grid stock, every rate case, every data center lease. I've watched this split build all year. Capacity auctions. Emergency orders. Rate cases. Every signal pointed here. But seeing it in one EIA line, expressed as a single 64-point gap, made it real in a way I hadn't felt before. America doesn't have one electricity market anymore. It has two. And the border between them is drawn by data centers. ⚡ Charged Up Three reads that put the split in sharper numbers. The EIA Report That Hides the Real Story in a National Average → EIA. The primary source. Scroll past the headline $52/MWh to Table 7b. The regional data tells a completely different story than the summary. Reuters: Record Demand, Regional Pain, and 4,288 Billion kWh → Reuters via Carrier Management. Scott DiSavino's full dispatch on the October STEO. The cleanest read of the numbers behind tonight's argument. EIA's Regional Wholesale Price Charts Tell a Story the Summary Doesn't → EIA Electric Power Monthly. The interactive wholesale market dashboard. Compare PJM and Mid-C side by side. The visual is the argument. Where the data centers land, prices surge. Where they don't, prices fall. That divergence is the trade. The national average will keep smoothing it over. Don't let it. — Theodore The Capital Current ⚡ Every financial story has a power line running through it.   Tap to add your vote Will the price split between data-center grids and non-data-center grids widen or close? 📈 Widen. The load only goes one way.⚖ Close. New supply catches up by 2028.🌎 Spread. Data centers move to cheaper grids. RM TK JN DP +6k 6,831 readers voting tonight · 203 in the last hour Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 The Capital Current by Media Miami LLC 1712 Pioneer Avenue Suite 500 Cheyenne, WY 82001, United States