Stephen Bennett

Stephen Bennett is senior manager of government affairs at PJM Interconnection, where he works on state government affairs for the regional transmission organization. His role is primarily educational and liaison focused rather than traditional lobbying, helping policymakers understand how the competitive retail and wholesale electricity markets work, how the high-voltage grid is operated, and what it takes to maintain reliable service.

Bennett has spent about three decades in the energy industry, with experience across competitive power markets, utility-related technology, and public policy. Before PJM, he worked at Exelon and PPL. He trained as a civil engineer at the University of Maryland, then built an IT career focused on competitive energy before moving into government affairs.

On The Grove episode “The Grid Bottleneck Holding Back Clean Energy | UIS | Stephen Bennett, PJM Interconnection,” Bennett explained PJM’s function as a federally regulated, nonprofit RTO responsible for reliability on the bulk power system. He described PJM’s scope as utility-scale generation and high-voltage transmission, ending at the substation where state-regulated distribution utilities take over. He also stressed that PJM owns no generation or transmission assets and has no financial stake in whether the system runs on solar, coal, nuclear, gas, or other resources. In the conversation, he clarified what PJM can and cannot do, how its member-driven structure and federal oversight shape decision-making, and how grid innovation must fit within reliability, market rules, and jurisdictional limits.