10-14-2025 4:08am

PSEG Pushing To

Piedmont power line developer wants regulators to move more quickly than planned

By:Christine Condon. Maryland matters

Frederick H. Hoover, chair of the Maryland Public Service Commission. (Photo by Bryan P. Sears/Maryland Matters)

The company behind the proposed Piedmont power line is pushing Maryland regulators to evaluate the project more quickly than planned, arguing that delays will jeopardize the power grid.

The company, PSEG Renewable Transmission, is opposing a procedural schedule issued by the Maryland Public Service Commission, which plans to review the project until at least February 2027.

PSEG argues that the commission’s schedule will make it impossible to reach a deadline for placing the power line in service by June 2027, which was set by the operator of the region’s electric grid, PJM Interconnection.

“PJM set the in-service date to prevent specific impending reliability violations,” wrote PSEG attorney J. Joseph Curran, III, in a letter to the commission. “Unless these violations are addressed, PJM has determined that overall system reliability in the PJM region — including in Maryland — could be compromised, and the PJM region could be exposed to widespread and extreme conditions, such as system collapse and blackouts.”

The commission, by contrast, has expressed confidence that the electric grid will remain well-managed while it deliberates about the transmission line.

In his letter to the commission, Curran also requested that it establish a target date to issue a final order on the Maryland Piedmont Reliability Project, as the power line project is known. An end date would help the company more efficiently coordinate with other state and federal permitting agencies, plan construction activities, and negotiate with landowners, he wrote.

But in a statement Friday, Tori Leonard, a spokesperson for the commission, said it is “unlikely” to place an end cap on the proceedings by setting a target date for a final order. The commission’s schedule ends in February 2027 with a deadline for the parties to submit their final briefs.

The commission will ultimately decide whether the controversial power line receives a “Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity,” authorizing its construction. But the process has already been mired in delays, largely because of intense pushback from landowners in the line’s path, and other community members and elected officials in the impacted jurisdictions.

Because of landowner denials, PSEG had to go to court to get a federal district judge to order temporary access to hundreds of properties for environmental surveys, which it will need in order to get a final ruling from the commission.

Those surveys are well underway, though landowners have appealed. On Thursday, the company filed suit against a third round of defiant landowners, requesting access to 64 additional parcels.

By comparison, in his Oct. 7 letter, Curran said the company has obtained voluntary access agreements for 52 parcels along the proposed route.

The proposed line would stretch 67 miles through largely rural areas in Baltimore, Carroll and Frederick counties, connecting a power substation near the Pennsylvania line with a substation in Frederick County.

The project was commissioned by grid operator PJM alongside a host of other projects meant to relieve problems in a strained grid, caused in part by the rise of energy-intensive data centers and expected retirements of fossil fuel generating stations.

In a statement shortly after the Maryland Commission issued its schedule for the Piedmont line, PJM spokesman Jeff Shields said that “PJM has identified extensive, severe, and widespread reliability violations that PJM expects to occur as soon as June 2027 if these projects are not built on the prescribed schedule, leaving the entire system more exposed to reliability risks, including power outages.”

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Shields noted that Maryland will be “additionally challenged to meet local demand from local sources” given the planned retirements of the Brandon Shores and Wagner power plants, which are currently operating solely because of “must run” agreements with the grid.

In its news release announcing the scheduling order on Sept. 11, the commission highlighted that PSEG submitted its application for the certification in late December 2024, as opposed to fall 2024 as planned.

In his letter to the commission, Curran pushed back, arguing that the New-Jersey based power company only submitted in December because it decided to conduct additional public hearings in November 2024.

In requesting an end date for the proceedings, Curran argued that it would help expedite the permits that PSEG would likely only be able to obtain after a decision on the certificate of public convenience, including from the Army Corps of Engineers, the Maryland Department of the Environment, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the impacted counties.

“Having a final order date in the procedural schedule is necessary so that the Company can have plans in place to ensure the Project goes into service as soon as practical to meet critical reliability needs,” Curran wrote.