TechTalk: How to Undo the Queue: Accelerating Interconnection through Automation

A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory highlighted nearly 3 terawatts of generation and storage capacity sitting in "interconnection queues" across the United States, over 95% of which are renewable energy or storage resources. These queues represent projects that are actively being studied or are waiting to be studied and most regions across the country are grappling with a backlog of projects that have 4+ year timelines between interconnection request and commercial operation. Developers regularly cite interconnection as a "project killer" and one of the greatest sources of risk to project development, due to the multi-year timelines and cost uncertainty around network upgrades.

This session will explore how software and automation is currently being deployed by transmission providers and project developers alike to tackle interconnection challenges. We will highlight battle-tested solutions that have helped model 300 GW of queued generation across the country, reducing months-long engineering processes down to hours. Additionally, we will discuss how developers can leverage interconnection study automation software to quantify a project's interconnection risk and make data-driven decisions that steer more projects to successful interconnection to the grid.