The annual “Queued Up” report issued by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in April 2024 revealed a wait list of about 2.6 terawatts (TW) of planned power projects seeking connection to the U.S. grid at the end of 2023. That number is up 27% from the previous year and represents twice as much generating capacity as the country currently enjoys.

Numbers have been increasing since 2013, and once the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, more than 1.2 TW has joined interconnection queues. That represents 540 gigawatts (GW) of storage, 500 GW of solar and 125 GW of wind. Last year, projects with 908 GW capacity were in the interconnection queues, which was a 759 GW increase over 2022, which was a 561 GW increase over 2021.         

According to the report, 95% of capacity in the current interconnection queues belongs to solar, battery and wind projects. Specifically, it includes more than 1 TW of solar capacity and 1 TW of battery storage, much of which is committed to hybrid projects. Wind represents 360 GW and gas-fired generation makes up 79 GW.

The report indicates that only 12% of the queue capacity (projects totaling 311 GW) have advanced to the final phase of the interconnection process—executed agreements—and only 14% of the queue capacity from 2000 to 2018 has been built. Completion rates for gas projects were 31%, for wind projects 20%, for solar projects 13% and for batteries just 11%.

Variable solar and wind make up an even smaller percentage, compared with dispatchable generation such as natural gas.

“Decarbonizing the electric sector requires higher levels of installed solar and wind capacity to achieve the same resource adequacy contributions,” according to the report. “High levels of storage can offset this need to some degree.”

Not surprisingly, increases are seen in the average time projects remain in the queue. In 2023, average time from requesting an interconnection study to beginning commercial operations was almost five years. In 2015, time in the queue averaged three years, and in 2008, it was less than two years.

The California Independent System Operation currently has the second-largest queue with 523 GW, the West, outside of California, has a queue of 706 GW.