PITTSBURGH (TNS) — Results released Tuesday for a capacity auction tied to future generated electricity indicated modest future price increases for retail customers that would have been larger without the filing of a federal complaint late last year by Gov. Josh Shapiro.

The results were announced by the nonprofit PJM Interconnection, which coordinates the flow of electricity in 13 states that include Pennsylvania. It runs a wholesale power market in which utilities purchase electricity that will be delivered to customers.

The just-completed wholesale capacity auction, PJM said Tuesday, resulted in an auction “clearing price” of $329.17 per megawatt day. That figure was right at a new “cap” established in a settlement that was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission following Shapiro’s complaint.

“Had that lower cap not been in place, we would have cleared at $380.57,” said Stu Bresler, an executive at PJM.

The previous year’s clearing price was $269.92. PJM estimated that the increase to $329.17 would mean an increase ranging from about 1.5% to 5% in customers’ retail bills, depending on which state the customer was in and other variables.

Shapiro filed the federal complaint against PJM late last year, claiming its capacity auction practices, left unchanged, could cost consumers billions of dollars. FERC subsequently approved a settlement between the governor and PJM that lowered the capacity auction price cap by 35 %.

Shapiro said previously that the new cap would avert a “runaway” price auction, which in turn would have led to unnecessary price increases for consumers.

Late Tuesday, Shapiro said his action had saved consumers billions of dollars. Had he not acted, Mr. Shapiro said, PJM would have set a cap that could have added hundreds of dollars a year to Pennsylvanians’ electric bills.

“When PJM’s auction was set to trigger grossly excessive price increases, I took action to stop that spike and protect Pennsylvania consumers,” Shapiro said in a news release. “My administration has now averted billions in unnecessary energy costs — and we’re leading the fight to lower electricity bills and bring more affordable power online.”

Power generation has been a frequent topic in Harrisburg, where lawmakers are well aware of predictions that an imbalance between supply and demand could lead to brownouts or blackouts in the future.

Much new demand is being placed on the power grid by electricity-hungry data centers needed to run artificial intelligence. Bresler said an increase in demand was logged in the auction, and he believed most of it was tied to “large load” customers like data centers.

Bresler also said PJM was pleased to see that some “retirements” of power generation facilities had been reversed. And, he said, some facilities announced upgrades.