Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

To clear the backlog of network upgrades, we need steel in the ground

Renewable Energy World: Renewable project developers must request transmission service and capacity qualification for new resources in organized markets. With much interest in interconnecting renewables, the interconnection queues have large amounts of requests in the study phase leading to delays in interconnections.

On average, an interconnection request takes more than 500 days to be closed out. Even then, there are challenges with this queue process because if a developer or set of projects drop out after signing the interconnection agreement, the projects below them are stuck with the transmission network upgrades. This project dropouts are resulting in re-studies, and those network upgrades are not getting built. The industry and the federal regulator must address this problem sooner than later. Independent transmission companies are a possible solution to get projects out of this queue quandary.

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