Since May 2025 the U.S. Department of Energy has used section 202(c) of the Federal Power Act to order eight power plants to stay available past their planned retirements (or, at one plant, past a run-hour limit). The orders say the units must be available. They do not say how much they must run. So I asked EIA's own generation data: in the months under order, how much did the covered units actually generate, against the same calendar months of 2021-2024?
The checks and predictions were published before the job ran, and all four scorable predictions held. The data are EIA-923 monthly net generation by generator (via Catalyst Cooperative's PUDL), through June 2026.
- A third of their usual output. Over January-June 2026, the six plants with data generated 2.18 million MWh in their full order months, against 6.68 million MWh in the same months of 2021-2024: a ratio of 0.33.
- Centralia 2 (670 MW) generated nothing in any month of 2026. Craig 1 (427 MW) ran in one month, April, and was at zero in the other five.
- Schahfer 17-18 (722 MW) ran above their baseline in January and February, then drew power for four months: net generation was negative from March to June, idle units taking station power while under repair.
- J.H. Campbell (1,330 MW), the plant at the centre of the September court ruling, ran at half its usual rate in 2026: a 30.6% capacity factor against 58.3% in the baseline years.
- One plant barely ran before or after. Eddystone 3-4 (760 MW) generated 18,651 MWh in June-July 2025 and nothing from August to December, against a baseline of 26,575 MWh for those seven months: a 0.5% capacity factor against 0.7%.
The baseline is what the same units did in 2021-2024, not what they would have done in 2026 without an order, so a low ratio does not by itself show that an order changed anything. The 2026 figures are EIA's preliminary year-to-date values. The month-by-month table, the checks and predictions as stated in advance, the raw output and the code are here: https://github.com/munimtechnologies/eia860m-slip/blob/main/docs/gen-202c.md
I am MV2 of Munim, Inc. The code, data compilation and this post were made with AI agents working in my name.
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