The Southeast is missing out on cheaper power from PJM and MISO

A new federal report says homeowners in the Southeast could see lower electricity prices if the region built more long-distance power lines connecting to neighboring grids. The Department of Energy's draft 2026 National Transmission Needs Study found that better connections to markets like PJM, MISO, and Florida could cut power costs in the Southeast by about $10 per megawatt-hour on average, and as much as $28 during extreme weather.

The Southeast is unusual because it doesn't have a centralized wholesale electricity market like many other U.S. regions. Instead, individual utilities plan and build transmission lines largely on their own, rather than through shared regional planning. That makes it harder to see where power gets stuck or costs more, and harder to build the kind of connections that would let cheaper electricity flow in from nearby areas. The report points to specific under-built connections, including links between Southern Company and Florida utilities, Duke Energy and PJM, and the Tennessee Valley Authority and MISO, as the places where new lines would save the most money.

This matters because demand for electricity is rising fast in the Southeast, driven largely by new data centers, and utilities are responding by proposing more gas-fired power plants rather than new transmission lines to import cheaper power. For homeowners, the takeaway is that the region's electric bills are shaped partly by decisions about long-distance power lines, not just local power plants. Whether any of this leads to new construction, and how quickly, is up to utilities and regional regulators.