The single largest project in the queue
Southwest Power Pool is the grid operator that manages electricity flow across Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, North Dakota, the Texas Panhandle and several more states. Before a new power source can connect to a grid, the operator studies it first in what is called an interconnection queue, a waiting list of projects asking permission to plug in. The single largest battery storage project anywhere in that queue, a facility that draws electricity from the grid, stores it, and sends it back later, is planned for Garner, Kansas. A study by Southwest Power Pool, finished May 22, 2025, lists the project at 424.5 megawatts, a unit of electric power, built from 93 inverters, devices that convert power between the battery and the grid, model Sungrow SC5000. It targets a connection date of June 1, 2028, at an existing substation, a facility that links power lines together, called Atlantic, rated at 345 kilovolts, a measure of electrical voltage, through transmission lines owned by Evergy Kansas Central. Adding the 2 network upgrade costs the study lists separately comes to 5,275,501 dollars.
Where Kansas actually ranks
Garner may be the single biggest project, but Kansas does not hold the most capacity signed to connect across the grid. Oklahoma leads with 2,300 megawatts under signed contract, according to Modo Energy, a firm that analyzes public interconnection data. Kansas is second at 1,100 megawatts. The Texas Panhandle, the only part of Texas inside this grid, carries just 600 megawatts.
Modo Energy labels this row Texas. It is renamed Texas Panhandle here because only that part of the state sits inside the Southwest Power Pool grid, not Texas as a whole.
Show the numbers
| Oklahoma | 2,300 |
| Kansas | 1,100 |
| Texas Panhandle | 600 |
| Nebraska | 400 |
| North Dakota | 240 |
| New Mexico | 100 |
| Arkansas | 70 |
| Missouri | 50 |
The whole grid is filling fast
Only 300 megawatts of battery storage was operating across the grid in November 2025. By the 2026 second quarter, 8 more projects had reached operation, bringing the total to 1.4 gigawatts, a unit equal to 1,000 megawatts, across 15 projects, according to a later Modo Energy update. The firm projects 10.7 gigawatts online by 2030, 20% of everything currently signed or waiting in the queue, and more than 21 gigawatts by 2031.
All 3 figures come from the same November 2025 report, before the 1.4 gigawatt operating total a later update reports for the 2026 second quarter.
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| Operating November 2025 | 0.3 |
| Signed late stage | 4.8 |
| Projected by 2030 | 10.7 |
Why coverage looks like Texas
None of this compares to the scale of Texas as a whole. The Energy Information Administration, the federal agency that tracks energy data, counted 43.6 gigawatts of battery storage operating nationwide at the end of 2025, climbing to nearly 52 gigawatts by the middle of 2026, a growth rate that averaged 70% a year over the last 3 years. Texas alone is set to add 12.9 gigawatts of new battery storage in 2026, more than half of everything the country plans to add that year, according to GCN, citing federal data. This article compares those 2 figures directly. Texas growth in a single year, 12.9 gigawatts, is more than 2.6 times the entire signed and waiting queue for the whole Southwest Power Pool grid, 4.8 gigawatts.
Based on a 24 gigawatt national planned total for 2026 that GCN states, converted from the percentage share GCN gives for each state.
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| Texas | 12.9 |
| California | 3.4 |
| Arizona | 3.2 |
Same state, two different grids
The 600 megawatts counted for Texas inside the Southwest Power Pool grid and the 12.9 gigawatts Texas plans nationwide are not measuring the same land. Most of Texas runs on ERCOT, a separate grid outside the one this article otherwise describes. Only a sliver of Texas, mostly the Panhandle, sits inside Southwest Power Pool. The state that dominates national battery storage coverage barely registers on the one regional grid map that actually contains a piece of it. The state that holds the single largest project on that grid is Kansas.