The country is bracing for the coming cold storm next week that should impact most of Canada and the lower 48 outside of the Pacific Northwest, California, and the Desert Southwest. Temperatures should start to fall rapidly over the weekend and move in across the Plains states through the Midwest and into PJM firmly by the start of next week bringing cold close to (but not quite on par with) the arctic blast from late last month. With temperatures falling and the changing conditions certain to stretch both the power grid and test the gas pipelines with freeze-offs and outages as well as greatly increased demand, it is worth noting that PJM is already off to a stronger than typical start when it comes to power demand in February compared to recent years.
Figure 1 | Average Hourly PJM Load and Generation by Fuel Type (MW)
The figure above shows average hourly load by month for the past three years, along with generation profiles broken out by fuel type over the same period. PJM experienced very strong load numbers in January, in part due to cold and in part thanks to the structural load growth that has been on display in the ISO going back to last summer and which we have discussed in previous market flashes. The figure below plots monthly total HDDs in PJM for Dec-February going back to 2017. 2025 posted the coldest January going back to 2017 with 1,104 total HDDs, nearly 200 higher than the average. However, load in PJM has continued to impress and come in much higher than the past two years so far in February despite temperatures much more in line with the historical norm. The bottom pane of the figure compares February HDDs for just the first 13 days of the month from each year, where 2025 is only 3% higher than average and less than 10% higher than in 2023, despite load averaging nearly 10 GW more this year.
Figure 2 | Monthly Total HDDs – Partial Month for February (First 13 Days)
This gap between each year’s load profile is only going to increase with the coming cold next week as it will only push load numbers higher for the current month. In comparison, February of 2023 started out strong with temperatures rising (and load declining in turn) as the month progressed, while 2024 kept a flatter level throughout the month with a drop-off at the end of the month.
Figure 3 | PJM February Hourly Load, 2023-2025
We can also see how the past temperatures from the past three years line up as well as the coming cold by plotting daily HDDs from February of 2023-2025 and incorporating the current forecast in orange in the figure below:
Figure 4 | PJM Daily February HDDs, Past Three Years
The start of February in 2025 has been mild compared to early February 2023 and only slightly colder than 2024, but next week’s weather changes should push HDDs up by 12 units compared to the current max for the month to-date and blow previous years out of the water by 11 degrees.
The other interesting element from Figure 1 with respect to how the month of February is playing out so far has to do with the thermal dispatch. Renewables have taken a sizeable step down from January with generation from solar and wind both much lower than last month and February solar the first month in the last three years to not show a year-over-year increase in output, stretching the year-on-year net load comparison even further. PJM thermal generation has needed to rise to make up the deficit but so far we’ve seen a much stronger response from the ISO’s coal fleet than natural gas. Price definitely comes into play here as gas spot prices are certainly higher this month compared to 12 and 24 months ago. TETCO-M3’s average of $3.71 for the month so far is higher than last year’s $1.60 mark by over $2, but the comparison to February of 2023 is not nearly as large, when the price was only 12 cents lower. Dominion and Transco-Z6 show larger price increases of $1.20 and $1.52, respectively.
Higher input prices this year for gas relative to coal play a role in the trend that has been on display all winter long which has halted the trend over much of the past two years of coal generation coming in lower than previous years with the evolution of the supply stack, retirements of coal facilities, and the like. We can see year-on-year comparison clearly in the figure below, which plots daily PJM thermal generation (coal plus natural gas-fired production) against the gas ratio, the proportion of total thermal output that is attributable to natural gas. This ratio is a good measure of coal-to-gas switching and has been on the rise over the past years as PJM has leaned more and more on its gas fleet relative to coal. In 2025, however, we see—on top of more points sitting further to the right in the scatter plot (more thermal generation overall in part due to colder temperatures)—the points in 2025 also sitting lower than previous years, indicating a lower gas ratio and a higher share of coal.
Figure 5 | PJM Daily Average Thermal Generation vs. Gas Ratio
As the cold moves in and drives demand higher, the trifecta of gas, coal, and transmission flows will be at the heart of the daily balancing efforts. We have already seen PJM cut flows west to MISO to a large degree this month compared to previous winters as shown in the figure below, which plots average hourly transmission into (positive) or out of (negative) PJM. Overall net exports are lower but the drop is tied almost exclusively to the MISO interface, with exports pointed to NYISO sitting nearly 1 GW higher year-on-year. This will almost certainly hold true next week, as the cold will impact NY and New England directly and NYISO has already demonstrated a pattern of pulling in supply from PJM and ISONE this winter when it has gotten cold. PJM instead will need to lean on any transmission flows from MISO (where it will also be quite cold) or the Southeast, or else turn to gas and coal generation, as well as fuel oil as a last resort. Even with the relative strength in coal so far this month, the fleet has another 11 GW or so of production to give (that showed up back in late January’s arctic blast but is not currently being dispatched), whereas daily peak load is projected to climb 15 GW compared to Tuesday and Wednesday earlier this week.
Figure 6 | PJM Average Hourly RT Transmission Flows (MW)
