Why it takes so long to connect a new power plant to the grid
The reason it takes so long to connect a new power plant to the grid now has a number attached to it. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, known as LBNL, counts 2,061 gigawatts of power plants and batteries still seeking a grid connection at the end of 2025, down 10% from the year before, the first decline the laboratory has measured. That total is still about 1.5 times the installed generating capacity of the United States.
Most of that decline was not projects finishing and turning on. It was projects giving up. Over 750 gigawatts of interconnection requests, applications to join the grid, were withdrawn during 2025 alone.
What is stalling in the queue
Solar and storage still make up most of what remains in line. Solar capacity in the queue fell 19% during the year to 773 gigawatts and storage fell 16% to 749 gigawatts, while wind fell 19% to 220 gigawatts. Natural gas moved the opposite direction, up 86% to 253 gigawatts, the only 1 of these 4 technologies that grew.
These 4 technologies do not add up to the full 2,061 gigawatt total, since the national count also tracks nuclear, hydro and other categories separately. Natural gas is the only 1 of the 4 that grew during 2025, all 3 of the others shrank.
Show the numbers
| Solar | 773 |
| Storage | 749 |
| Natural gas | 253 |
| Wind | 220 |
Most projects that ask to connect never get built
Shrinking is not the same as building. Of every project that requested an interconnection between 2000 and 2020, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reports that only 13% had reached commercial operation, meaning it began producing power, by the end of 2025. 75% had been withdrawn and the remaining 10% are still waiting in line. The median project finishing in 2025 took more than 5 years from its first request to turning on. GCN reports, from the same laboratory data, that about 14 gigawatts were withdrawn in 2025 for every 1 gigawatt that reached commercial operation.
These figures are the laboratory own count of what became of every project that asked to connect between 2000 and 2020, tracked through the end of 2025. The 3 shares do not sum to exactly 100 because of rounding in the source reporting.
Show the numbers
| Reached operation | 13 |
| Withdrawn | 75 |
| Still waiting | 10 |
PJM says its own backlog is gone
The reform behind the change has a name, FERC Order 2023, a 2023 federal rule that replaced the old one at a time study process with a faster one, grouping applications into batches with deadlines for each study. PJM Interconnection, the grid operator for 13 states and Washington D.C., ran the first cycle under that new process this year and qualified 715 new generation projects, worth 201.5 gigawatts of capacity.
The rigorous process that is now in place is designed to encourage projects that will get built.
Jason Connell, Vice President of Planning at PJM Interconnection, the grid operator for 13 states and Washington D.C.. Source 4.
There is no remaining backlog from prior queues.
PJM Interconnection, the news release own institutional statement on the state of its prior queues, not attributed to a person. Source 4.
That statement describes how fast studies now move, not how many of those projects will actually get built, and the 13% national completion rate above says most still will not. The numbers PJM itself reports carry the same caution. 51 gigawatts of PJM capacity holds a signed interconnection agreement, the approval that lets a project connect to the wires, and is still not built, slowed by state permitting and supply chains rather than by the study process itself.
The reform is progress, not a fix
An independent review by Grid Strategies credits the reform with real progress on speed and transparency, and still finds several regions receive low grades for long study timelines and cost uncertainty, and recommends more cost certainty and faster transmission construction. The queue is finally getting shorter mostly because projects are leaving it unbuilt, not because they are getting built.