Advanced Energy United Generator Interconnection Scorecard

Posted by Reports on Mar 6, 2024 4:56:04 PM

Publish Date: February 26, 2024; Updated: March 7, 2024

Currently, over one million megawatts of generator and storage projects are actively seeking to connect to the U.S. transmission grid. The various grid interconnection processes across the nation have been slow and received criticism from a wide range of stakeholders for being dysfunctional. The 2024 Advanced Energy United Generator Interconnection Scorecard evaluates the outcomes and processes of the generator interconnection process across the seven U.S. regional grid operators (the RTOs/ISOs), finding some bright spots and room for significant improvement.

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Topics: Wholesale Markets, Transmission

Interconnection Reforms for New England’s Grid

Posted by Reports on Oct 31, 2023 12:38:18 PM

Publish Date: November 1, 2023

The New England grid must rapidly replace retiring resources with new generation to meet future load. However, uncertainty regarding the cost of accessing the grid and delays in interconnection hinder these efforts. The costs imposed on ratepayers by inefficiencies in the interconnection process are so significant that they threaten to prevent New England states from achieving their policy requirements.

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Topics: Wholesale Markets, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire

Moving Through the Interconnection Queue: How a Project Gets Built—or Doesn’t

Posted by Reports on Oct 5, 2023 12:52:00 PM

Publish Date: October 5, 2023

Across the country, over 2,000 gigawatts of resources representing 10,000 projects are waiting for the green light to connect to the grid so they can commence construction and start operating—mostly clean resources like wind, solar, battery storage, and hybrid renewable-plus-storage projects. These projects are stuck in interconnection queues, undergoing an evaluation of reliability impacts and transmission system upgrades that must be made before they can start to deliver electricity to the grid.

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Topics: Wholesale Markets

FERC Order 2023 Toolkit: Highlights from the First Leg of the Transmission Reform Marathon

Posted by Reports on Sep 13, 2023 2:33:33 PM

Publish Date: September 13, 2023

Interconnection – the process of studying how a project will impact the grid once it's plugged in – is a key piece of the advanced energy deployment process. However, over the last few years as deployment accelerates, the interconnection process has stalled to a near standstillleaving many clean energy projects stuck or even cancelled. To address this increasingly difficult issue, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) began to consider reforms back in 2021, and in July of this year, they issued a ruling based on their considerations.  

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Topics: Wholesale Markets

Understanding FERC’s Proposal for Relieving Interconnection Delays

Posted by Reports on Sep 27, 2022 5:24:00 PM

Publish Date: September 26, 2022

On June 16, 2022, FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) proposing changes to its regulations governing interconnection processes and agreements. The NOPR comes as interconnection delays across the country are slowing project development, with three times as many requests waiting in interconnection queues today as there were five years ago. FERC’s NOPR seeks to resolve these backlogs by proposing solutions that balance increased requirements for interconnecting generators to demonstrate commercial viability and “readiness” to stay in the interconnection queue and firmer obligations for transmission providers to complete studies on time.

“Understanding FERC’s Proposal for Relieving Interconnection Delays” summarizes the key provisions of FERC’s NOPR, describes how FERC proposes to change the responsibilities of interconnection customers and transmission providers, and highlights the challenges that FERC will need to address in a final ruling in order to break the delays and wait times that plague clean energy projects today.

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Topics: State Policy, Wholesale Markets, Transmission