A Thousand Basements, Bidding Into PJM as One Power Plant

I.What sits idle, and the order that targets it

There is a good chance something in your house already talks to the grid without earning you a cent. A battery wired to rooftop solar in Mount Airy, a smart thermostat that eases back on a July afternoon, an EV charger in a South Philadelphia driveway that waits until the small hours out of habit. Between the moments you use them, most of that equipment just sits there.

A federal rule aims at the idle part. In 2020 the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC, the agency that oversees interstate power markets) issued Order 2222, which tells grid operators to let companies bundle many small resources, home batteries, thermostats, chargers, into one package that bids into the wholesale market like a small power plant. For this region the operator is PJM (the regional grid operator, based in the Philadelphia suburbs, that runs the market across parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, per its own description), and PJM has been filing the rules to make the bundling work.

II.How the bundle bids

Order 2222 requires each operator to open its markets to a 'distributed energy resource aggregation,' which is just a group of small resources treated as one market participant. It also capped how high the minimum size can be set, at roughly 100 kilowatts, small in market terms but still far above a single home battery (on the order of 5 kilowatts). To clear that bar, dozens of homes have to be grouped together, and someone has to do the grouping. That someone is called an aggregator.

Those markets are the ones PJM already runs: energy (the hour-to-hour buying and selling of electricity), capacity (where the grid pays resources to promise they will show up on the hardest days), and ancillary services (the fast, second-to-second adjustments that keep supply and demand matched). A home battery is best suited to the quick jobs, charging when power is cheap and plentiful and pushing back when the grid is tight. Whether that adds up to real money depends on prices that move all the time.

III.Where PJM's rules stand

PJM filed its compliance plan with FERC, FERC sent parts back for changes (routine in these dockets), and PJM has filed again. That back-and-forth is the main reason the start date keeps moving. At last public report the timeline pointed to participation opening a year or two out, and anyone who follows these filings knows such dates tend to slip.

Pennsylvania's retail market adds a second layer. The state's Public Utility Commission (the PA PUC, the agency that regulates PECO and retail electricity service) has its own say, because a wholesale bid from your basement touches both the federal market and your state-regulated delivery service. How cleanly those two hand off to each other is one of the harder things left to settle, so the honest answer on timing is that it depends on both FERC and the PUC.

IV.What a PECO customer can sign today

The nearest thing a PECO customer can actually sign up for today is not Order 2222, it is demand response: you agree to cut or shift your usage when the grid is strained, in exchange for a payment. That is delivered through a Curtailment Service Provider (a CSP, a company PJM approves to bundle customers and bid their reductions into the market). PECO and independent companies have run programs like this for years, and they are the direct ancestor of what Order 2222 is meant to broaden to batteries and chargers.

So if a company offers to pay you now for letting it nudge your thermostat or tap your battery, that is almost certainly a demand response or utility program, not a direct wholesale bid under the new order. Worth reading who keeps the market revenue, whether you can leave without a penalty, and what the company can do on a day the grid calls. For a rowhouse owner the live question is less whether your battery will bid into PJM and more which company will do it, on what terms, and whether your equipment even qualifies.

V.Worth watching this month

1. PJM's Order 2222 compliance docket at FERC, where the next filing or order should reset the start date, is routine until a firm effective date finally appears.

2. PECO's program pages and any new rate case before the Pennsylvania PUC, where demand response or battery incentives could change, are worth a periodic check though mostly routine.

3. The first aggregator to open enrollment to homes in PECO territory would be the real signal that the market is live for residential customers, and that one actually matters.

4. PJM's seasonal capacity and reliability notices heading into a Delaware Valley winter hint at how valuable a quick-responding battery might become, which is routine but worth a glance.

5. FERC's broader Order 2222 updates in other grid regions preview what tends to work before PJM's turn, useful as context rather than anything urgent.

Sources on the bench

FERC, Order No. 2222 explainer (federal regulator) The order itself and FERC's plain-language summary of what grid operators must allow and why. · www.ferc.gov/explainer-order-no-2222
PJM, distributed energy resources and Order 2222 (regional grid operator) PJM's own page tracking its Order 2222 compliance work and distributed energy resource rules for this region. · www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations/distributed-energy-resources
PJM, demand response (regional grid operator) How PJM's existing demand response works and what a Curtailment Service Provider does, the path open today. · www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations/demand-response
Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission (state regulator) The agency that regulates PECO and any Pennsylvania rate cases or retail electricity rules that affect enrollment. · www.puc.pa.gov
PECO, smart energy programs (utility) PECO's listing of current demand response and energy programs a customer can enroll in right now. · www.peco.com/smart-energy