The town of Ottawa lies in central Illinois 12 miles from a nuclear power plant and a wind turbine farm that stretches past the horizon. However, these facilities sit on the other side of an invisible boundary between two regional power grids. 

By mutual agreement among utilities that own the grids and power plants, that nuclear plant and wind station sell much of their power to Chicago, Ohio and the East Coast. Ottawa gets most of its power from southern Illinois, western states and even the Canadian province of Manitoba, whose electricity may now be subject to a U.S. tariff.

The power Ottawa gets is also dirtier, less reliable and more expensive than that of its neighbors. 

It’s a story being told across the state.

Because central and southern Illinois differ from their northern counterparts in how they make and buy electricity, they’re slipping behind in the race for cheap and reliable power, clean air and economic growth.

In a few years, towns on both sides of the boundary could be overwhelmed by surging power demand from artificial intelligence data centers, and by the state’s failure to connect wind and solar to the grid as fast as it closes coal and natural gas plants to clean the air.

“Data centers are coming to Illinois because of our reliable grid. However, there is a mismatch in the amount of generation we need,’’ said Scott Vogt, vice president of strategy for ComEd, the primary grid operator in northern Illinois. “A large amount of new carbon-free generation and storage needs to be built to ensure all of our customers have enough clean power when they need it.”

Ottawa, a town of 19,000 people 75 miles southwest of Chicago, is in the four-fifths of the state where the electricity grid is run by MISO, or the Midwest Independent System Operator. 

On a day-to-day basis, three-quarters of Ottawa’s power comes from coal and natural gas. The state has ordered a shutdown of all those plants within its borders starting in five years. 

Even so, the Illinois Commerce Commission said last year that “there is presently no assurance” that private-sector investments and government incentives will be enough to build clean power replacements.

The ICC published a chart last year showing that by 2045, when Illinois’ coal and natural gas plants are scheduled to be gone, the state’s section of MISO could have the capacity to produce just 30% of the electricity it needs. Rising solar output could fill some of this gap but not all, the ICC said.

According to the ICC, this MISO shortfall is the state’s most pressing energy problem.

PJM Interconnection runs the grid in most of northern Illinois, from Chicago to the Mississippi River. The area draws on six nuclear plants and is a net exporter of about a third of its power to other states and at times to MISO’s Illinois territory.

However, according to energy consultant Mark Pruitt, northern Illinois may run short of generating capacity beginning in 2030 and become a net electricity importer, since the state will be shutting down PJM coal and gas plants, too. 

Pruitt is former head of the Illinois Power Agency, a state agency that procures affordable power for low-income residents. He based his projection on PJM data.

MISO and PJM are nonprofit corporations started by producers and distributors of fossil-fuel electricity. They’re two of the seven regional grid operators in the United States.

They’re required by federal law to maintain grid stability and to prevent market manipulation through competitive auctions to select which power plants operate when and at what price. 

These rules reinforce their conservative nature, say clean energy advocates.“Utilities are regulated monopolies for the most part,’’ said Jeff Danielson, vice president of advocacy for the Clean Grid Alliance, a St. Paul, Minnesota-based environmental group. “They’re kind of stuck in time.’’In Ottawa, Ameren customers on the MISO grid pay an average of $151 a month for electricity, compared to $105 for ComEd customers on the other side of the boundary, executives at the companies said.

When capacity auction charges increase June 1, average monthly bills for ComEd residential customers will increase by $14.50. The utility plans to offset $6.30 of this increase with unused nuclear credits. At Ameren, typical residential bills, averaged through the course of the year, will rise by $17 per month because of the capacity auction. But homeowners will actually pay most of this increase during the summer, when rates spike anyway because of higher demand.

Because of these two factors, monthly bills for average homeowners will hit $254 during the summer before falling back down below the new $168 annual average in the fall, according to Ameren.

Capacity auction prices gyrate wildly from year to year and across different states that belong to PJM and MISO. It’s part of a now-familiar ritual as the grid operators sell to the highest bidder space on their grids for future energy transfers.

“Two years ago, after the auction, the MISO districts got hit so hard with higher costs that we had grocery stores go out of business because they couldn’t keep their refrigeration units and freezers going,’’ said Terri Bryant, the Republican state senator in Murphysboro, 90 miles southeast of St. Louis.“Now it’s happening in PJM and I’m like, ‘Welcome to the party, my friends,’’’ she said.

Data center challenge

David Noble, Ottawa’s community development director, said the electricity supply in Ottawa has been able to handle large-scale developments that use 200 megawatts of electricity or more. However, data centers can use four or five times more power.

Ottawa hasn’t landed a data center. In fact, according to Baxtel, a St. Louis-based research firm, there are only three in the entire MISO grid territory of Illinois.

In contrast, according to Baxtel, the PJM area of Illinois has 93 active data centers and 49 more being built or planned.

“There is a significant issue with the availability of generating capacity in downstate Illinois,” said Matthew Tomc, vice president of regulatory policy and energy supply for Ameren. “It presents a challenge for these data centers to come here.”

In what could be a bumpy ride, Springfield legislators will work on an energy bill over the next few weeks to address some of these problems.

They say they hope to complete the bill before their scheduled adjournment May 31. Some lobbyists worry, because of the cost and complexity of the issues involved, that lawmakers won’t finish the bill until they reconvene after Labor Day.

The core debate is how much battery storage Illinois should deploy and at what cost. 

The batteries would work in tandem with wind and solar, first warehousing their power and then releasing it in steady increments that can be tolerated by grids built for the continuous and centralized burning of fossil fuel.

Some legislators are also pressing for more natural gas. It’s a lethal fossil fuel, but it’s plentiful.In an email, Alex Gough, a spokesman for Gov. JB Pritzker, didn’t address the prospect, detailed by the state’s own ICC, that Illinois could flip and become a net energy importer in the not-too-distant future.“We have a strong grid, and we are one of the nation’s largest energy exporters,’’ Gough said. “We are firing on all cylinders to get more renewables on the grid.’’Gough didn’t respond to a question about the upcoming energy bill.

Building backup plans

Located at the confluence of the Illinois and Fox rivers, Ottawa was a trading post for Native Americans and then Europeans before being incorporated in 1853. 

The city celebrates the first Lincoln-Douglas debate in 1858 with statues and murals in its main downtown square.

Starved Rock State Park, where melting glaciers cut a string of waterfalls into sandstone cliffs millennia ago, lies 3 miles downstream.

The waterfalls helped attract 2.4 million nature lovers last year, more than visited three-quarters of U.S. national parks.

Starved Rock is a big, joyful tourist draw. However, overall, jobs and incomes in Ottawa are flat, and the local hospital may move its obstetrics and emergency room services to a nearby town. 

An electricity blackout or price spike would be another gut punch.

The same would be true at Pilkington North America, which makes glass for buildings and solar panels in a factory just west of downtown.

The company does so by melting pure silica sand from a quarry half a mile away with other ingredients in 2,800-degree Fahrenheit, natural gas-fired furnaces. 

Pilkington’s parent company, NSG Group, plans to unveil a 2-megawatt, 10-acre solar panel array along the banks of the Illinois River on May 23. The project is part of a campaign to cut carbon emissions by at least 30% by 2030, according to the company.

John Buffington, vice president of business development for SolAmerica Energy, built the solar array and will sell the power to Pilkington. He’s built them for industrial companies across Illinois and is finishing up two others in addition to the one in Ottawa.

“We are certainly finding increased interest in our on-site solar projects,” Buffington said. “People are worried about their operational expenses related to electricity and they’re looking to save money and insulate themselves.”

Buffington said the project took advantage of state subsidies called Renewable Energy Credits, partly to compensate for less intense sunshine this far north of the equator.The credits have helped nearly triple renewable electricity generation in Illinois since 2019, Pritzker said during a March appearance at a Washington, D.C., think tank.

However, in February, the Illinois Power Agency warned that the fund that provides those credits could start running a deficit in 2028. That could bring state subsidies for new renewable projects to a halt.

Nuclear expansion

For Sue Rezin, the Republican state senator for Ottawa, securing the state’s energy supplies will require more wind, solar, nuclear and natural gas. 

She’s sponsoring legislation to lift the ban on big new nuclear plants that Illinois has had since 1987. The ban came almost a decade after a partial meltdown at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania cemented ongoing public concerns about nuclear costs and radioactive waste.

On April 28, the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association organized a tour of Constellation Energy’s nuclear power station in Clinton for legislators and Pritzker administration officials.Constellation, the country’s biggest electricity producer, could build a second reactor at the site, according to IMA President Mark Denzler.Clinton lies in the heart of the state’s MISO territory, 25 miles south of Bloomington.

Constellation believes existing sites offer the best opportunity for nuclear expansion, said spokesman Paul Adams. The company is constantly evaluating such opportunities at Clinton and elsewhere, he said.

Rezin also wants to use provisions in the 2021 Climate and Equitable Jobs Act to delay the closing of natural gas plants in Illinois beyond 2045. 

CEJA allows such a delay if three agencies — the Illinois Power Agency, the ICC and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency — declare that the state’s energy supply can’t be secured without it. They’re scheduled to report to the legislature on these matters in December.

“Several times we’ve come very close to having a brownout in MISO,” Rezin said. “We hold our breath every summer.”

Three hundred miles to the south, Sen. Bryant of Murphysboro wants the state to delay its plan to force the Prairie State Generating Station, a big coal plant in her district, to shut down by 2045.

She expects President Donald Trump to keep Prairie State open through an executive order, even though coal plants have been dying not just because of clean air rules but also because of cheap natural gas.

Bryant said Trump may also kill solar subsidies. She acknowledges that more air pollution will follow, but she says it’s only for a while.

“We have to have energy here, and we would like to have some data centers,” Bryant said. “For that, we need reliable, 24/7 energy. Right now, that still means coal, but in the future, it’s going to mean small nuclear reactors,” she said. “Just give us some time to get there.”

Tighter restraints

Tomc of Ameren said he still believes Illinois can meet its CEJA goal of eliminating fossil fuels from its power plants by 2045. However, he said the goal may need to be revised. 

“In the near term, you’re going to see an increasing dependence on natural gas across the country,” said Tomc, whose company sells both electricity and natural gas.

However, 95% of natural gas is composed of methane, which is more potent in the short term than carbon dioxide as an atmosphere-choking pollutant.

Pritzker may be reluctant to roll back CEJA’s decarbonization targets, his signature environmental achievement, while possibly eyeing a White House run. At his behest, the Democratic supermajorities in the legislature may simply outvote downstate, fossil fuel-minded Republicans.

Plus, even ComEd and Ameren are joining environmentalists in saying Illinois has other options besides burning more fossil fuel.

According to Vogt, the utility’s vice president for strategy, the ComEd grid in northern Illinois currently requires 31 gigawatts of installed generating capacity to reliably meet peak demand. 

Vogt said the utility is evaluating data center requests for another 14 gigawatts of power and has a mind-bending 22 gigawatts of renewable, fossil and battery storage projects stuck in line at PJM, waiting for a grid hookup. PJM serves 13 states from Illinois to New Jersey, plus the District of Columbia.

Some projects have been stuck in line at PJM for as long as seven years.

At MISO, which covers 15 states from Mississippi to North Dakota, plus Manitoba, a similar backlog is about 50% bigger than the total installed generating capacity, according to Brandon Morris, a MISO spokesman.

Clean energy advocates have long complained that utilities that have historically relied on fossil fuel continue to dominate PJM. Two examples of such companies are Duke Energy and Southern Power.

ComEd’s parent company, Exelon, which runs major electricity grids in Chicago, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., has just one of 519 votes on the PJM members committee.

Vogt applauded Pritzker for joining other governors, including Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, in pressuring PJM to place tighter restraints on capacity auction charges in recent months.

PJM’s spiking charges “showcase a complete disregard of vulnerable communities,’’ Pritzker said in an October statement.

If he wants to escalate, Pritzker could revisit an idea the ICC studied three years ago — withdrawing from MISO and turning to PJM entirely. He could also withdraw from both and launch the state’s own regional grid, like the Electric Reliability Council of Texas.

Vogt said that until PJM’s problems are sorted out, Illinois should invest in rooftop and community solar, energy efficiency and flexible rates that shift consumption to non-peak hours. For now, he said, developers in the ComEd territory can’t get utility-scale solar connected to the PJM grid.

It’s a stunning admission for a utility that has used size as a weapon since the days of Thomas Edison.Spokesmen for MISO and PJM said they’re working hard to cut their backlogs.The PJM backlog fell to 60 gigawatts this year from 200 gigawatts in 2022 because most projects dropped out or failed to qualify, said spokesman Jeffrey Shields. On May 2, PJM announced plans to expedite 9.4 gigawatts of “shovel-ready’’ projects to deal with looming energy shortages. Of these, about two-thirds were natural gas.

Lack of energy planning

So, how will the Illinois legislature navigate this maelstrom during its spring session, which ends in three weeks? 

The answer will partly depend on the overall budget outlook, which is clouded by pending Medicaid cuts in Washington and the possibility of a tariff-induced recession.

For now, the starting points of the bill are provisions the legislature tried and failed to complete before adjourning last year, said Jennifer Walling, executive director of the Illinois Environmental Council.

She said the first of these is battery storage, which is intended to help wind and solar connect to the PJM and MISO grids by capturing and then releasing their power in steady increments.Illinois has been practicing for this moment. Since the CEJA bill passed in 2021, the state has spent $280 million to install battery storage facilities at former coal plants, said Gough, the Pritzker spokesman.The legislative debate about a statewide rollout of this effort could start with an ICC recommendation, issued May 1, that Illinois deploy 1.04 gigawatts of battery storage starting in August. The state would deploy another 2 gigawatts of storage by 2027 and plan for even more after that.Illinois would support these deployments with the same sort of Renewable Energy Credits it currently uses for wind and solar.

For now, the ICC is looking only at batteries that can pump electricity back into the grid for four hours at a time. “That’s not enough to carry you through a weeklong blizzard,” Pruitt said. “But you can manage the regular daily fluctuations.”In its report, the ICC estimated that the 3 gigawatts of battery storage it’s proposing by 2027 would cost average residential ratepayers $1.69 a month at Ameren and $1.17 a month at ComEd.
But it would save them money later, the ICC said, by reducing the state’s dependence on PJM and MISO capacity auctions, thereby driving down prices. And if Illinois deploys enough storage soon enough, it won’t have to push back its CEJA targets for closing coal and natural gas plants to clean the air, said Danielson of the Clean Grid Alliance.

Walling said another pillar of the coming bill will be tougher requirements for utilities to cut demand. The state would help them do so by, among other things, providing incentives for customers to install insulated windows and heat pumps.

Many forthcoming debates are likely to focus on data centers and other big energy users. 

The Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition and the Citizens Utility Board are already mailing postcards to residents denouncing data centers as electricity hogs. 

“These big data centers need to cover their own costs and energy needs, not stick consumers and small businesses with the bill,” the postcards say.

Marc Poulos, a top Democratic fundraiser in Springfield, said that tactic could cripple economic development.

“Here’s an entirely new industry that brings in massive tax dollars,” Poulos said. “They’re not going to come to Illinois if we’re the only ones saying, ‘Let’s put a major tariff on them to reduce the cost to average consumers.’”

Poulos is the executive director of labor-management operations for the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 150. 

He wants the bill to allow data centers to connect directly to natural gas pipelines or power plants. Federal officials would need to approve such a measure.

Mason Emnett, senior vice president for public policy at Constellation, said data centers wouldn’t be a burden on other ratepayers if they agreed to curtail their operations, or switch to backup power, during the hottest parts of the summer.

Doing so even for just 20 hours during a summer would help, since utilities wouldn’t have to build expensive power plants just for these peak loads, Emnett said.Dan Diorio, a lobbyist for data centers, insists they’re committed to paying the full cost of their energy. In an email, he said that last year, companies that operate data centers bought half of all clean energy purchased in the United States.

Diorio is senior director of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, a lobbying group based in Loudoun County, Virginia, that includes Google, Microsoft and Meta.

At Ameren, policy vice president Tomc says the most important step Illinois legislators can take this year is to launch a formal planning process for how future energy production will match up with future demand.

It may come as a shock to most residents, but Illinois is flying blind in this regard. The state hasn’t had such a formal planning process since 1997, when it deregulated its electricity industry by ordering ComEd and Ameren to sell their power plants, Pruitt said.

“Like a lot of deregulation for airlines, shipping, trucking and other industries in the 1980s and 1990s, the idea was, ‘Let’s use competition to set prices instead of a bureaucrat approving a rate of return,’” he said.“That’s an OK theory,” Pruitt said. “But these wholesale markets only set prices one year into the future. To build a power plant, you need 15 or 20 years of revenue certainty.”Energy planning also faced a distinctly Illinoisian type of roadblock in the long-running tenure of Michael Madigan as House majority leader.“Planning energy out more than 10 years was something Madigan opposed,” Walling said. “He always liked you to come back to the legislature every five or 10 years to negotiate again,” she said.

Madigan resigned as speaker in 2021 after leading the Illinois House for 36 years. Seven months later, Pritzker signed the CEJA bill and its long-range decarbonization goals. In February of this year, a Chicago jury convicted Madigan of 10 corruption charges, three of which involved his dealings with ComEd.

Pruitt said that by embracing a formal process of forecasting electricity supply and demand, the state can design and quickly implement better incentives to ensure that new power sources and transmission lines are ready when and where needed. 

“The value of planning is that you’re forced to go through all the ‘what ifs,’” Pruitt said. “This state hasn’t done any ‘what if’ planning for 30 years.”

Back in Ottawa, development director Noble is fighting a completely different type of battle.

His main tourism goal is to lure Starved Rock visitors to stop in town, enjoy themselves and spend a little money. He’s planning a riverfront amphitheater and hotel for this purpose. He’s promoting the St. Genevieve paddlewheel boat tours on the Illinois River so people can get a close-up look at the water and the sandstone cliffs.

It’s hard work, and he doesn’t have the time or the background to make detailed studies of the Illinois power grid. He’s not hearing any complaints around town about not having enough electricity. But he knows that can change if the sources of Illinois power fail to keep pace with rising demand.

“We need to rely on the regulators, the utilities, and the legislators to do their job and produce a plan for Illinois,” Noble said. “They’ve done this in the past. Hopefully, smaller communities like ours won’t get the shaft.’’