LEARN / REINDUSTRIALIZATION
The Interconnection Queue
Before a power plant can connect to the transmission system, the operator must study what the connection does to the network and assign the cost of any upgrades. The list of projects waiting is the interconnection queue, and it now holds roughly twice the generating capacity the country has installed.
Key points
- More than 2,060 GW of generation and storage was actively seeking transmission connection at the end of 2025.
- Median duration from request to commercial operation exceeded five years for projects built in 2025, against under two years for those built between 2000 and 2007.
- Historically only about 13 percent of capacity that enters a queue reaches operation, so queue volume is a list of applications rather than a pipeline.
- The national datasets cover generation seeking transmission connection. Load interconnection, which is what a factory files, appears in none of them.
- FERC Order No. 2023 replaced serial first-come studies with cluster studies and firmer commercial readiness requirements.
What the queue is
A generator cannot simply plug into the grid. The transmission operator has to determine what the addition does to power flows, what equipment must be upgraded to accommodate it, and who pays for those upgrades. Those determinations come from a sequence of studies, and the ordered list of projects moving through that sequence is the interconnection queue.
Berkeley Lab compiles the national picture annually from the seven ISOs and RTOs and roughly fifty non-ISO balancing areas, together covering about 98 percent of installed American generating capacity.
Data2,060 GW · 5 years · 13%
Capacity actively seeking transmission interconnection at the end of 2025, roughly twice the installed U.S. generating fleet. Median duration from request to commercial operation exceeded five years for projects built in 2025, against under two years for projects built between 2000 and 2007. About 13 percent of capacity entering a queue historically reaches operation. Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up, 2026 edition.
Series and provenance
- Agency
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Program
- Queued Up, Electricity Markets and Policy
- Series
- 2026 edition, data through end of 2025
- Measure
- Capacity seeking transmission interconnection
- Units
- Gigawatts; years; percent completion
- Adjustment
- Active requests, duplicates removed
- Period
- Requests through December 2025
- Latest
- 2,060 GW active; median over 5 years from request to operation for projects built in 2025; about 13 percent historical completion
- Source tier
- Synthesis, compiled from ISO, RTO and utility data covering about 98 percent of U.S. capacity
- Retrieved
- August 9, 2026
Covers generation requests seeking transmission connection only. Excludes load interconnection requests, distribution-connected projects and behind-the-meter projects. A factory connecting as new load appears nowhere in these figures.
Why so little of it gets built
The completion rate is the figure that most changes how the queue should be read. If roughly seven of every eight gigawatts never energises, then queue volume measures applications submitted rather than capacity forthcoming, and a developer or journalist treating 2,060 GW as a pipeline overstates by close to a factor of eight.
The attrition has a mechanism. Filing an interconnection request has historically been cheap, so developers filed early, filed often, and filed in several places for the same project to preserve optionality. Studies were conducted serially, so one speculative project withdrawing forced restudy of everything behind it, which lengthened queues for the serious projects and encouraged still more defensive filing.
FERC Order No. 2023 addressed that design directly, moving operators from serial first-come studies to cluster studies that evaluate groups together, and imposing firmer commercial readiness deposits and site control requirements so that entering a queue costs something. The reforms are recent enough that their effect on completion rates is not yet visible in outcome data.
Measurement noteBerkeley Lab states that its dataset includes only generation requests seeking transmission connection. It excludes load interconnection requests, distribution-connected projects and behind-the-meter projects. A factory or data center applying to connect as new load appears nowhere in the 2,060 GW figure, and commentary citing the queue as the wait a new industrial facility faces is citing a series that contains no industrial facilities.
The load queue nobody publishes
Large load interconnection is administered utility by utility. There is no national compiler, no standard reporting format and no consistent disclosure, which means the constraint most directly binding on new manufacturing is the one with the least public evidence about its size or duration.
What visibility exists comes from individual operators. ERCOT reported monitoring roughly 226 GW of large load interconnection requests in December 2025, against a system peak near 85 GW, and one utility that introduced a financial commitment requirement watched its large load queue fall from about 30 GW to 5.6 GW.
Institute analysisThe generation queue is measured, studied and reformed. The load queue is neither compiled nor disclosed on any common basis. For a country attempting to site substantial new industrial capacity, the asymmetry is backwards: the better-measured constraint is the one that binds a developer, and the unmeasured one is the one that binds a manufacturer.
Common misconceptions
That the queue is a pipeline. Historical completion near 13 percent means it is a list of applications, most of which will not be built.
That queue length measures regulatory obstruction. Much of the duration comes from restudy triggered by withdrawals, which is a consequence of how cheap it was to enter rather than of the study itself.
That the queue tells a manufacturer anything about its own wait. It covers generation only. Load interconnection runs on a separate, unpublished process.
What the evidence says, and where it is contested
ContestedWhether interconnection reform will materially shorten timelines is unsettled. One position holds that cluster studies and readiness requirements attack the actual cause, that the AEP Ohio result shows how sharply a financial commitment filters speculative volume, and that queues will clear as the reforms take effect. A second holds that the binding constraint was never the study process but the physical transmission the studies keep identifying as necessary, and that faster studies simply produce faster confirmation that upgrades nobody has agreed to fund are required. The two are not mutually exclusive, and outcome data covering the post-reform period does not yet exist.
Related Institute research
Transmission and Why It Is Not Built
What the studies keep identifying as necessary.
Why Reindustrialization Requires More Electricity
What this means for industrial siting.
Why Supply Is Not Keeping Pace
Capacity that cannot connect does not serve load.
Sources
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up: 2026 Edition. emp.lbl.gov
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Order No. 2023, Improvements to Generator Interconnection Procedures and Agreements. ferc.gov
- North American Electric Reliability Corporation, 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment. nerc.com
Reference entry maintained by the Institute for American Manufacturing & Technology. Figures are drawn from primary sources and cited above. Where the Institute states a position rather than a finding, it is marked as such.