DCPSC Interim Chairman Ted Trabue: “The Big Pressure” on Electricity Bills Is Supply

DCPSC Interim Chairman Ted Trabue: "The Big Pressure" on Electricity Bills Is Supply

DCPSC Interim Chairman Ted Trabue: "The Big Pressure" on Electricity Bills Is Supply

D.C. customers are feeling the effects as PJM Interconnection market fails to attract enough new generation to keep pace with demand.

WASHINGTON (September 18, 2026) - At Axios' Electricity in Transition: Current Challenges, Future Power event on Tuesday, Interim Chairman Ted Trabue of the Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia explained how regional electricity market conditions are affecting D.C. customers.

"In the district, 99% of our electricity is coming from somewhere else," said Trabue.

PJM Interconnection runs the regional electricity market where power for D.C. is bought. Pepco, the local electricity company, delivers that power to customers, but it does not generate the electricity or set its wholesale price. Because D.C. must purchase nearly all its power through the regional market, customers pay more when the region does not have enough supply to keep up with demand.

"You've got a supply and demand imbalance, and our customers unfortunately are feeling the ramifications of that," Trabue said, adding that "the development of the supply side has not nearly kept up with the explosion on the demand side."

"The big pressure on the bill, is in that last piece, the supply side," he said, adding that supply costs have increased significantly over the last three years.

Trabue's remarks underscore the need for swift PJM reforms to bring more generation online, keep pace with growing demand, and keep electricity costs as affordable as possible.

Watch the full clip here and read the transcript below.

Interview with Axios Energy Reporter Ben Geman and Interim Chairman of the Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia Ted Trabue

This transcript has been edited slightly for clarity and length.

Ben Geman: For our final conversation of the morning, we're turning to the local level, where rising electricity demand is bringing questions about grid investment, reliability, and affordability into much sharper focus. Here to talk about those challenges is Trabue, interim chairman of the Public Service Commission of the District of Columbia. Thanks so much for being here.

The District itself is not an AI data center hub, but how does having so many data centers nearby affect the Public Service Commission and the work you do?

Interim Chairman Trabue: Thank you for having me. That is a great question to start the conversation.

Let's agree that we have electricity here in the room. The lights, cameras, and everything else are running on electricity. Where is that electricity coming from?

We do not have a generating station here in the District of Columbia. The last generating station we had, a peaking plant on Benning Road, closed on June 1, 2012. So Pepco, on behalf of its residential and commercial customers, has to procure that electricity on the open market through the PJM Interconnection grid.

PJM Interconnection connects homes and businesses from here all the way to Indiana, covering 13 states and the District of Columbia. The electricity we are using here today could be coming from Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio, or Kentucky.

Maryland has some generation, but not much. There was only one day last year when Maryland generated more electricity than it imported. In the District, 99 percent of our electricity is coming from somewhere else.

Electricity is a commodity. It has to be purchased through auctions, and we are competing with others in places like Virginia and Pennsylvania to procure it.

That is where the data center discussion comes in. I saw a report this morning that there are 250 data centers currently operating in Loudoun County, with another 150 permitted or expected to come online. A good-sized data center can consume as much electricity as 20,000 to 50,000 homes. That is a lot of electricity per data center, and we are competing with that demand.

It is basic supply and demand. You have older generators that are more expensive to run, and the new generation that was expected to come online has not done so to the degree we anticipated, either because of federal mandates or problems PJM Interconnection has experienced over the years.

You've got a supply-and-demand imbalance, and our customers unfortunately are feeling the ramifications of that.

Ben Geman: What sources did you expect to come online that have not been able to?

Interim Chairman Trabue: Most of it was clean energy, including solar and wind. With the rescission of the 30 percent investment tax credits for solar development and the termination of permits to build offshore wind, much of the supply that was expected to be added in the area where we purchase electricity is not coming online.

Wind is not coming online, and solar has been slow to develop. If you were going to build a combined-cycle gas plant, it would take almost six years to bring a new one online.

The development of the supply side has not nearly kept up with the explosion on the demand side created by data centers, other large loads, and some industrial development as well.

Ben Geman: You mentioned solar. The 2025 budget law removed or accelerated the phaseout of credits for utility-scale wind and solar, as well as residential solar. You have residential solar in the District. What has that policy change meant for residential solar here?

Interim Chairman Trabue: We have a very robust residential solar program called Solar for All, and I am very proud of it.

Before I had this job, I ran the District of Columbia Sustainable Energy Utility. One of our initiatives was a solar program exclusively dedicated to putting solar on the homes of income-qualified residents. We also began building community solar projects that could connect hundreds of residents at a time.

Over more than a decade, we have installed more than 1,000 solar systems on the homes of income-qualified, lower-income families. More than 12,000 individuals are connected to community solar projects. This can cut an electricity bill by 40 percent or more, significantly reducing what customers pay each month.

The cost of solar clearly was assisted by the 30 percent investment tax credit, which unfortunately has gone away. We have been following and monitoring solar development in the District, and I am proud to say that I think we are on track to roughly match the numbers we reached last year.

The Commission passed emergency regulations last year to ensure that people could take advantage of the investment tax credit before it expired on December 31. Pepco would typically process about 300 interconnection applications a month. With the emergency regulations we passed, Pepco was able to process more than 1,000 applications last December, helping a significant number of D.C. residents bring their solar systems online and reduce their energy bills.

Ben Geman: The emergency regulations were intended to help people make it under the deadline?

Interim Chairman Trabue: Right. We are extending those regulations to allow people to bring solar online as quickly as possible. Time is money. Even though people are no longer able to access the federal tax credits, we still want them to be able to bring these solar systems online as quickly as possible.

Ben Geman: Given that scramble, has there been a Trump solar boom in the District?

Interim Chairman Trabue: We have not seen a boom this year, but we saw a real boom at the end of last year.

There were clearly a number of people who said, "If a solar system costs an average of $15,000 to $20,000 and I can receive roughly $7,000 or $8,000 through a federal tax credit, let me take advantage of that opportunity before it goes away." A lot of people did.

That was not limited to income-qualified people. It included market-rate customers across the board.

Ben Geman: I live in Maryland.

Interim Chairman Trabue: Unfortunately, Maryland does not have some of the same incentives we have. I am proud to say that our solar program is very strong here in the city.

Ben Geman: There are other headwinds affecting the District's electricity situation. We were previously discussing tariffs. It might not seem obvious to customers, but how do tariffs imposed on goods from different countries affect what District residents pay for electricity and the electricity generated outside the District?

Interim Chairman Trabue: Tariffs have played an important role in costs.

When you look at an electric distribution company like Pepco, you are looking at poles and wires. You have to procure electricity from the PJM Interconnection grid, bring it into the city, and distribute it to homes and businesses.

What are wires made from? Copper. Where does some of that copper come from? China, where it is affected by tariffs. Many inverters for solar systems come from Asia and are also affected by tariffs. Much of the wood used for utility poles comes from Canada and is affected by tariffs.

These are costs that Pepco must first pay and that will be reflected in customer bills moving forward.

Earlier this morning, you had the president of a very large utility here. That company is able to spread costs across hundreds of thousands of residents and businesses throughout the Carolinas and other areas.

Here in the District of Columbia, we have approximately 350,000 electric customers. We have approximately 700,000 residents, but not every resident is an individual customer. We therefore have a much smaller customer base across which to spread costs, and that unfortunately is being reflected in rising customer bills.

There are several components to the bill, and I think this is critical to understand.

First, there is the distribution charge. That is what customers pay for the poles and wires, and it represents about 27 to 30 percent of the bill.

There are also transmission costs, which are not a huge part of the bill, as well as fees and taxes. These fees and taxes are not imposed by the Public Service Commission. They are often legislative initiatives imposed by the mayor and the D.C. Council to advance climate goals or for other purposes.

The final component is the supply side. This is the generation side, where we procure electricity from Pennsylvania, Virginia, and other states.

The pressure, the big pressure on the bill, is in that last piece, the supply side. The distribution portion I mentioned first has probably gone up by about 12 to 14 percent over the last three years, but the supply side has probably tripled over the last three years or so. That is what our customers are feeling, and it is why we opened an affordability docket here in the District of Columbia.

We opened it in January. We are going to bring in voices that the Commission has never heard before. I am reaching out to all segments of the community to have a candid conversation about how we can bring costs down.

We are not in this by ourselves. I do not want District residents to feel like we are alone.

If you look at our electricity rates nationally, at approximately 24 cents per kilowatt-hour, we are about average. I know people say we are the highest in the country, but we are not. Costs are much higher in places like Hawaii, New York, and New England.

It is the supply side, and the supply side is a vexing problem that has officials concerned from the District of Columbia to California.

Commissioners from every state got on the phone two weeks ago and agreed to have a candid conversation about what we can do as commissioners at the national level. We are going to put our heads together and meet monthly, or more often if necessary, to identify solutions.

As I said, this is a problem from shore to shore.

Ben Geman: I will be very interested in learning the outcome of those conversations. You have walked us through an incredibly fascinating but also very challenging and daunting landscape.

Unfortunately, we have to leave it there. We are out of time. Thank you so much for being here.