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The 2025 edition of the LBNL "Queued Up" report presents a landmark moment for the U.S. energy grid. After a decade of exponential growth, the interconnection queues saw their first significant volume decrease in years.
As of the end of 2024, approximately 2,290 gigawatts (GW) of capacity remain active in these queues, representing nearly twice the capacity of the current U.S. power plant fleet.
However, the sheer scale of the queue is only part of the story. For the engineers tasked with integrating these resources, the 2025 report highlights a shifting reality: the industry is moving from an era of speculative volume to a new mandate of technical "readiness."
In a striking departure from previous years, the total active capacity in U.S. interconnection queues decreased by 12% year-over-year in 2024. This decline was driven by two main factors: a reduction in new requests and a historic wave of project withdrawals.
For utility planners, this "thinning of the herd" is a double-edged sword. While it may reduce the sheer number of speculative projects to study, the high withdrawal rates, particularly the one-third of 2024 withdrawals that occurred at the facility study or Interconnection Agreement (IA) phases, cause massive disruptions and costly re-studies for the projects that remain.
One of the most concerning metrics for grid engineers is the continued lengthening of interconnection timelines. The typical project reaching commercial operation in 2024 spent an average of 55 months (4.5 years) in the queue.
To understand the severity of this trend, consider the historical context provided by LBNL:
This delay isn't just a matter of administrative backlog; it is an engineering friction problem. Historically, only about 19% of projects (representing 13% of capacity) that entered the queue between 2000 and 2019 reached commercial operation by the end of 2024. The remainder are often bogged down by "one-off" technical configurations and the manual labor of integrating non-standardized field equipment.
At Loopback Systems, we believe this data proves that the "bespoke engineering" model is no longer sustainable. Reducing the "per-site" engineering burden through standardized, SCADA-ready interconnection units is the only way to reverse this 55-month trend and improve completion rates.
The reduction in queue volume is largely attributed to the implementation of major regulatory reforms, most notably FERC Order 2023. These reforms are transitioning the industry toward a "first-ready, first-served" cluster study approach.
Key readiness requirements now include:
In this high-stakes environment, "readiness" goes beyond land and money. It means having a turnkey, pre-configured communication and integration design that utilities can trust. Standardization, which is at the core of our philosophy and why we created powerWatch, allows developers to clear these technical bars faster and with less risk.
The LBNL report highlights that the grid is becoming technically more complex as simple generation projects are replaced by hybrid configurations.
For SCADA and Telecom engineers, hybrid sites represent a massive increase in the number of data points, communication protocols, and security requirements to manage at the grid edge.
Manually integrating these complex sites through traditional methods is a driver of the delays and re-studies. A unified, hardware-agnostic platform is essential to manage this "Hybrid Complexity Multiplier" without overwhelming utility resources.
The 2025 LBNL report is a clear signal that the interconnection process is evolving. The era of unchecked volume is giving way to an era that demands efficiency, reliability, and speed.
The transition to a cleaner grid cannot happen at a 55-month pace. To move the 2.3 TW of capacity currently in the queues into active operation, the industry must embrace technical standardization.
By automating the Grid Edge and standardizing how DERs communicate, integrating them seamlessly into SCADA systems, and ensuring utility-grade security from day one, we can transform the interconnection queue from a bottleneck into a pipeline.
Keep the conversation going. Explore more of our in-depth articles on grid modernization, DER integration, and the future of energy.
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Got a concept you want to work through? Whether it's standardizing DER processes, optimizing equipment choices, or streamlining interconnection workflows, we’ve helped utilities and developers solve these challenges.
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