Gov. Wes Moore is siding with his counterpart in Pennsylvania, Gov. Josh Shapiro, in a heated dispute with the operator of the regional power grid over an impending surge in utility bills.

Moore joined the governors of Illinois, New Jersey and Delaware to echo Shapiro in a letter last week calling on federal utility regulators to lower the cap on prices at an upcoming PJM electricity auction, after the last one resulted a record-setting jump for customers’ utility bills.

“I remain deeply troubled by the affordability crisis Maryland residential and commercial energy customers face following PJM’s recent capacity auction, a crisis that may worsen in the next capacity auction if further action is not taken,” Moore wrote in a follow-up letter to PJM leadership this week.

The message from Moore and other Democratic governors comes as a feud between Shapiro and PJM is heating up. He filed a complaint with federal regulators against the grid operator in December. In a letter last week, Shapiro blamed PJM for a “market failure” and warned that if the grid operator doesn’t take steps to resolve the issue, he would have to “question whether Pennsylvania should remain within a construct that inflicts such unjust costs on our customers.”

PJM spokeswoman Susan Buehler said in a statement that the grid operator has accepted an invitation to meet with the Shapiro administration and is considering the Pennsylvania governor’s suggestion to institute a lower price cap on its next capacity auction.

“We have been clear that a cap and a floor have to be workable to ensure reliability, incentivize new build and preserve investor confidence in the market,” said Beuhler, who added that PJM shares the governors’ concerns about rising costs to ratepayers. “We want to make sure that our Members and other stakeholders are aware of these developments and discussions. We would expect to have additional conversations with the members if these talks progress.”

The dispute with PJM comes as many customers in the region are already dealing with an unrelated spike in prices on their natural gas heating bills this winter.

But the expected jump in electricity prices on the PJM-managed grid stems from an auction last July for selling electricity to utility companies. Starting this June, customers in the PJM grid are expected to collectively pay $14.7 billion for their electricity delivery, compared to $2.2 billion after the previous auction.

For Baltimore Gas and Electric customers, that translates to an increase of about 19% per month, according to the estimates by the Maryland Office of the People’s Counsel.

While PJM has taken steps to address a backlog of power generation sources waiting to hook onto its system, the four governors argue in their letter that these efforts aren’t enough. They estimate that, without mitigating costs through a lower price cap at this summer’s auction, customers will be out even more over the next two years.

PJM has come under fire from Maryland lawmakers, consumer watchdogs and climate advocates for last summer’s auction.

“PJM’s existing capacity market and interconnection processes are in urgent need of updates,” Maryland Sierra Club director Josh Tulkin said in a statement this week. “These processes have contributed to unnecessary delay in bringing clean energy projects online and must be fixed to ensure Marylanders have access to safe, reliable, and affordable energy.”