What is the interconnection queue?
Why building a power plant is easy and plugging it in takes years.
Before a new power plant or battery can connect to the grid, the operator has to study what it'll do to the system, including whether the local lines can handle it, what upgrades are needed, and who pays. Every project waiting for that study and approval sits in the interconnection queue. In much of the US, that queue has ballooned: there's far more wind, solar, and storage waiting to connect than is actually being built, and waits stretch to several years.
The queue has become the real bottleneck of the energy transition. It's not that we can't build clean generation; it's that the process of plugging it in, and building the transmission to carry it, hasn't kept pace. Reforming how queues work, and building more long-distance lines, is now central to how fast grids like PJM and MISO can decarbonise.
Browse the requests themselves in nrgmap's interconnection queue list: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's national history through 2025, with the current CAISO, ERCOT and BPA queues read from the operators' own files.
Frequently asked questions
What is the interconnection queue?
The backlog of proposed power plants and batteries waiting for grid operators to study and approve their connection to the grid. In the US it now holds far more capacity than gets built each year.
Why is the queue a problem?
Because it's slow. Multi-year waits and costly required upgrades hold back wind, solar, and storage that's otherwise ready to build, making the queue a key brake on the energy transition.