CEO
Letter

When I reflect on my first year as PJM’s President and CEO, I am proud of how our members, stakeholders and PJM team united to remain undeterred and focused on our priorities of reliable operations, fair and efficient markets, prudent planning and, most of all, the well-being of our people.

I want to recognize the PJM team and our member and industry partners for their unwavering dedication, though difficult and unanticipated circumstances, to ensuring the flow of reliable electricity for the 65 million people we serve. I recognize how hard 2020 has been and want to acknowledge the many sacrifices made by all our team members to perform PJM’s critical mission. I am especially grateful to my colleagues who went into sequestration, living on our campus for extended periods of time to help ensure the reliability of the grid.

While our work continues, PJM and our stakeholders have much to be proud of from a very notable year. Working together, we fulfilled our mandates for compliance on the Minimum Offer Price Rule affecting our capacity market. We made significant progress in the areas of credit and risk management and continued to examine our Financial Transmission Rights (FTR)/Auction Revenue Rights (ARR) market mechanisms. We broke new ground in planning with New Jersey officials to assist with state goals for offshore wind. We developed an Effective Load Carrying Capability model to calculate the capacity contribution of intermittent and output-limited resources. We also initiated important dialogues with our stakeholders regarding interconnection queue reform and the future of resource adequacy.

Inside PJM, our year was very focused on adapting to the pandemic while keeping our people safe and moving most of our interactions with each other and with our stakeholders online. 2020 was also a year of significant social upheaval and, after reflecting on events in the world around us, we vigorously recommitted to supporting diversity, equity and inclusion at PJM. We will continue to challenge ourselves as we work to transform the status quo. It is important to me that the PJM team reflects the people whom we serve and that all of our colleagues feel empowered to bring their whole selves to work every day.

Our industry is evolving rapidly – several of our states and consumers are pursuing aggressive decarbonization policies; distributed energy resources continue to proliferate; grid technologies continue to evolve; and the penetration of variable renewable resources is accelerating. All the while, PJM’s core mission – reliability at the least total cost – remains as important as ever. It is up to us – PJM, our members, our states and our broader stakeholder community – to work together to continue to evolve our markets, operations and planning to deliver on this mission in a changing world.

I’m excited to share a recap of 2020 in this annual report and to work, together with you, on the exciting new possibilities that lie ahead.

Sincerely,

Manu Asthana, President & Chief Executive Officer