Last updated: November 2, 2026
Interconnection queues, capacity additions, and siting rules, by the numbers
Interconnection queue capacity and wait times, solar, wind, and battery capacity additions, and local siting ordinance counts, from published public sources.
Three different kinds of evidence sit behind this name, and they must not be mixed. The interconnection queue counts projects seeking permission to connect; developer plans count projects developers intend to build; and completed additions count projects actually built. The queue is by far the largest of the three — 2,061 GW waiting against roughly 64 GW planned for a single year — and that gap is the point: permission, not ambition, is the scarce resource. A second distinction matters throughout: solar, wind, and storage figures come from different surveys with different definitions, so each row below names its own source and its own basis.
What the latest numbers show is a queue that is shrinking through withdrawals rather than completions, a buildout led overwhelmingly by solar and storage, and a local rulebook that has grown sixfold for wind in four years. The developer who reads all three together — queue, buildout, and ordinance count — is reading the siting market as it actually works.
The figures
| Figure | Value | Trend vs prior period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Active interconnection queue capacity, end of 2025 | 2,061 GW of generation and storage (1,312 GW generation; 749 GW storage) across ~8,200 projects | ▼ Down Prior: peak of nearly 2,600 GW active at the end of 2023; 10% decrease from 2024 to 2025 | Berkeley Lab, Queued Up: 2026 Edition (data through end of 2025) |
| Queue capacity by technology, end of 2025 | Solar 773 GW; storage 749 GW; wind 220 GW; natural gas 253 GW | ● Mixed Prior: gas +86% year over year; solar −19%; storage −16%; wind −19% | Berkeley Lab, Queued Up: 2026 Edition |
| Queue movement in 2025 | Over 750 GW withdrawn; about 600 GW of new requests submitted | ▼ Down Second consecutive year in which withdrawals exceeded new requests | Berkeley Lab, Queued Up: 2026 Edition |
| Queue capacity with a draft or executed interconnection agreement | 536 GW — over a quarter of active capacity (32% of solar; 33% of wind; 22% of storage; 18% of gas) | ▲ Up Prior: agreement processing volume rose in most regions with data; record agreement capacity signed in 2025 at CAISO, ERCOT, SPP, and MISO | Berkeley Lab, Queued Up: 2026 Edition |
| Historical queue completion rate | 13% of capacity from requests submitted in 2000–2020 had come online by the end of 2025; 75% had withdrawn | ● Baseline Long-run outcome rate — final outcomes for more recent requests cannot yet be determined | Berkeley Lab, Queued Up: 2026 Edition |
| Median interconnection timelines, 2025 | Request to signed interconnection agreement: well over 3 years; request to commercial operations: over 5 years | ● Baseline Medians for projects reaching each milestone; commercial-operations figure covers the subset of regions with available data | Berkeley Lab, Queued Up: 2026 Edition |
| Active queue capacity by region, end of 2025 | Non-ISO West 567 GW; ERCOT 408 GW | ● Mixed Prior: capacity fell in 2025 in all regions except ERCOT and SPP | Berkeley Lab, Queued Up: 2026 Edition |
| Planned new U.S. utility-scale capacity, 2025 (developer plans, not completions) | 64 GW total planned: solar 33.3 GW; battery storage 18.3 GW; wind 7.8 GW; natural gas 4.7 GW | ● Forecast Developer plans reported to EIA in August 2025 — plans, not completed projects; do not compare directly with completed-addition rows | EIA developer plans, as reported by pv magazine (August 21, 2025) |
| U.S. utility-scale battery storage, 2024 (completed) | 10.4 GW added in 2024 (+66%); cumulative capacity over 26 GW; about 2% of the 1,230 GW U.S. utility-scale fleet | ▲ Up Prior: second-largest source of new capacity in 2024 after solar; operators planned a further 19.6 GW for 2025 | EIA, Today in Energy (March 12, 2025) |
| U.S. solar installations, Q3 2025 (completed) | 11.7 GW installed in Q3 2025 (third-largest quarter on record); over 30 GW year-to-date; solar 58% of all new capacity in the first nine months of 2025; solar plus storage 85% | ▲ Up Prior: Q3 2025 up 49% sequentially and 26% year over year at utility scale (9.7 GW utility-scale in the quarter) | SEIA / Wood Mackenzie, U.S. Solar Market Insight Q4 2025, as reported by TaiyangNews (December 10, 2025) |
| U.S. wind installed capacity, end of 2024 | Over 155 GW land-based wind plus 174 MW offshore; about 10% of national electricity demand | ● Baseline Prior: 2024 additions of about 4 GW, the lowest since 2013, after a 2020 record of 17 GW | IEA Wind TCP, USA Annual Report 2024 |
| Local wind and solar siting ordinances in effect, 2022 | 1,853 wind ordinances (vs 286 in 2018); 839 solar ordinances | ▲ Up Prior: wind ordinance count grew more than sixfold between 2018 and 2022; no earlier comparison year published for solar | NREL siting ordinances research, as reported by pv magazine USA (August 4, 2023) |
| Effect of setback ordinances on available resource (modeled, extrapolated) | Wind resources reduced by up to 87%; solar resources by up to 38%, depending on setback size; wind technical potential 7,800 GW under the most lenient siting vs 2,280 GW under the most stringent | ● Modeled Modeled extrapolation, not a measured annual change — shown to size the ordinance effect, not as a year-over-year trend | NREL, Impact of Siting Ordinances on Land Availability for Wind and Solar Development |
| FERC Order No. 2023 cluster study timeline (rule, not an outcome) | 45-day cluster request window; 60-day customer engagement window; 150-day single-phase cluster study; first-ready, first-served process | ● Rule Rule issued July 28, 2023; study clock is not a project clock — median request-to-operation still exceeds 5 years | FERC Order No. 2023, summary by Troutman (August 2, 2023) |
How to read these numbers
Included: Berkeley Lab Queued Up 2026 queue capacity, composition, movement, agreement status, completion rates, timelines, and regional figures (data through end of 2025); EIA developer plans for 2025 and completed battery additions for 2024, kept in separate labeled rows; SEIA / Wood Mackenzie completed solar installations for Q3 2025; IEA Wind installed wind capacity for end of 2024; NREL local ordinance counts and modeled setback effects; and the FERC Order No. 2023 study timeline as a rule, not an outcome. Excluded: undated homepage claims presented as dated figures, market totals that blend planned and completed capacity, and any queue figure that mixes generation with load interconnection requests.
Forecasts and plans are labeled as forecasts and plans wherever they appear. Queue figures describe projects seeking connection, most of which will never be built, and are shown with their reporting dates so a reader can judge their age.
Disclaimer: Figures on this page are aggregated public estimates assembled for information only. They are not investment advice, legal advice, medical advice, or a professional opinion on any specific case, claim, project, or purchase. Original reporting and the underlying surveys remain the work of the sources linked above; this page summarizes their published figures with attribution and adds no proprietary dataset.
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Changelog
- November 2, 2026: Initial edition — Berkeley Lab Queued Up 2026 queue figures, EIA 2025 plans and 2024 battery additions, SEIA / Wood Mackenzie Q3 2025 solar installations, IEA Wind 2024 capacity, NREL siting ordinance counts, and FERC Order No. 2023 timelines established.