The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) last week issued a proposed rule to accelerate the connecting of new renewable energy generators to the grid and alleviate the enormous backlog in interconnection queues.
At the end of 2021, more than 1,400 GW of renewable energy generation and storage projects were delayed in interconnection queues across the US, with facilities now needing to wait an average of more than three years to connect to the grid, according to the regulator.
Many grid operators and utilities have been employing the “first-come, first-served” processes, which have few safeguards to weed out speculative interconnection requests. Some of them are thus shifting to “first-ready, first-served” processes, which would put more burdens on project developers to demonstrate that the projects are likely to be completed as planned.
