Eastern US power interconnection queues dominated by renewables, energy storage

US Mid-Atlantic and Northeast power market interconnection queues remain dominated by solar power, wind power and energy storage projects with small volumes of natural gas-fired projects scheduled for either this year or 2025.

PJM Interconnection, which covers 13 states and Washington serving 65 million people, has about 204 MW of gas-fired capacity scheduled to come online in 2024 or 2025, according to interconnection queue data as of Sept. 4.

Importantly, the interconnection queue lists the status of requests to interconnect new or increased capacity generating facilities in the various power markets. Queue data represents the potential future mix of power resources but is a dynamic database that can change and not all projects in the queue get built. It is a blunt instrument that serves as a proxy for what the future power generation resource mix could look like.

Offshore wind power projects are also progressing in multiple PJM states, with about 540 MW of capacity scheduled to come online by the end of 2024. An additional 776 MW is scheduled to come online in 2025, according to the data.

The offshore wind power projects are being developed in Virginia, Delaware and New Jersey.

Solar power, however, is the most prominent resource in the queue with 11,391 MW of capacity listed as having a commercial operational milestone in 2024, and about 14,168 MW of capacity scheduled to come online in 2025.

Solar-plus-storage projects totaling 6,549 MW are scheduled reach commercial operation this year and next.

Finally, land-based wind power projects with capacity of 1,518 MW are scheduled to come online this year and next, according to the data.

NYISO

Being a smaller market, the New York Independent System Operator has fewer projects in the interconnection queue than PJM.

There are two solar-plus-storage projects scheduled to come online in December 2025 totaling 445 MW of capacity, and 1,764 MW of stand-alone energy storage projects with proposed commercial operational dates in 2024 and 2025.

Solar power projects totaling 3,039 MW are scheduled to come online this year and next, according to the latest interconnection queue data.

Land-based wind power projects totaling 1,626 MW of capacity are scheduled for this year and next, and there are two offshore wind projects scheduled to come online in 2025 that total 1,696 MW of capacity.

ISO New England

In ISO-NE territory, there are 2,372 MW of battery energy storage projects in the interconnection queue scheduled for operational dates in 2024 or 2025.

There are two dual fuel power plants that run on gas or diesel fuel that have uprates totaling about 90 MW of capacity scheduled to come online in 2025.

There are also fuel cell projects with a total capacity of about 33 MW scheduled for 2024 and 2025.

Solar power projects are also abundant in the queue with a total capacity of 1,450 MW scheduled for this year or next. There are also 283 MW of projects that combine solar with batteries in the queue for 2024 and 2025.

Regarding wind power projects, there are about 707 MW of land-based wind projects in the queue scheduled to come online this year and next and 2,331 MW of offshore wind power projects with operational dates by the end of this year and next.