This is the founding thesis for the grid vertical at Clean Power Press.
The clean energy buildout has a physics problem that no amount of policy or capital can solve quickly: electrons need wires, and the US is not building enough of them.
The scale of the constraint is measurable. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory tracks the US interconnection queue — the backlog of projects waiting for grid connection. As of mid-2025, the queue holds approximately 2,600 GW of generating capacity, the vast majority of it wind, solar, and battery storage. For context: total US installed electricity capacity is roughly 1,300 GW. The queue is twice the size of the existing grid.
Most of those projects will not get built. The historical completion rate of projects entering the interconnection queue is roughly 15–20%. The rest withdraw, are canceled, or remain stuck indefinitely. But even the fraction that do complete faces median interconnection wait times that have extended from roughly 2 years in 2010 to over 5 years today.
Why the queue is broken
The interconnection queue is managed by regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) under FERC jurisdiction. The process was designed for an era when new generation was added incrementally, not for the current era where annual capacity additions are measured in tens of gigawatts.
Three structural problems:
1. First-in, first-out creates perverse incentives. Projects secure their place in the queue early to lock in connection cost allocations — sometimes before a project is fully developed. This encourages speculative queue entry and produces a backlog bloated with projects that will never get built. FERC Order 2023, issued in December 2023 and implementing new cluster-study and readiness requirements, attempts to fix this. The fix is real but takes years to work through the system.
2. Cost allocation is politically contested. When a new generator connects, it can trigger “network upgrades” that benefit many existing generators and load centers — but under historical rules, the connecting generator bore most of the cost. FERC Order 2023 attempts to spread costs more broadly, but implementation has been fought by incumbent utilities who would pay more under new allocations.
3. Transmission infrastructure lags generation timelines. A solar project can be permitted and built in 2–3 years. A new 345 kV transmission line takes 7–12 years from planning to energization, including permitting, right-of-way acquisition, equipment procurement, and construction. New generation is regularly built before the transmission to carry it.
FERC’s order 2023: real but not fast
FERC Order 2023 is the most significant interconnection reform in a generation. Key provisions: cluster-based study (projects are studied as a group rather than in sequence, dramatically reducing study time), readiness requirements to reduce speculative queue entries, and a 150-day processing deadline for interconnection agreements.
Early implementation results are mixed. Several RTOs have filed compliance plans; PJM’s first cluster process under Order 2023 is running but has faced internal disputes. MISO implemented similar cluster-study reforms earlier and has seen some improvement in queue processing time, though backlogs persist.
The realistic timeline for Order 2023 to clear the existing backlog: 5–7 years. Projects entering the queue today will benefit from faster processing; projects already in the queue are working through the old system.
MISO LRTP: the most concrete plan
The Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s Long Range Transmission Plan (LRTP) is the most concrete large-scale transmission build plan currently advancing in the US. Tranche 1, approved in 2022, identified approximately $10.3B of transmission projects across 18 lines in MISO’s footprint. Tranche 2, approved in 2024, added another $21.8B, bringing the combined authorized spend to roughly $32B.
These are real projects with real capital behind them. But the projects in LRTP Tranche 1 (approved 2022) are targeting in-service dates of 2028–2032. Building high-voltage transmission at scale, even with political will and capital, takes that long.
The MISO LRTP does not solve the interconnection queue problem directly — it expands the backbone grid’s capacity, which enables more projects to interconnect at lower upgrade cost, but the queue bottleneck is at the local study level, not the backbone level.
DOE SPARK: the fastest tool in the box
The DOE’s Selected Pathways for Accelerating Reconductoring Knowledge (SPARK) program, funded at $1.9B in early 2026, is targeting a different constraint: replacing existing transmission line conductors with higher-capacity materials.
The case for reconductoring: the US has approximately 200,000+ miles of high-voltage transmission. A significant fraction of that infrastructure runs at 1960s–1980s conductor capacity. Replacing conductors with advanced high-temperature low-sag (ACSS/TW) or carbon-fiber-core conductors can increase line capacity by 20–100% using existing towers, existing right-of-way, and existing substations. No new permitting. No new right-of-way fights.
The cost-per-GW of capacity added via reconductoring is significantly lower than new greenfield transmission, and the timeline is 2–5 years rather than 7–12. The DOE’s $1.9B SPARK investment is meant to catalyze a much larger private capital deployment by demonstrating the economics at scale.
Reconductoring is not a substitute for new transmission — you can’t reconductor your way to new geographic reach — but it is the highest near-term ROI move for adding grid capacity in corridors where congestion is the binding constraint.
The Southern Spirit HVDC line
The DOE’s selection of the Southern Spirit High-Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) line for federal support represents a different category of grid investment: a new 320-mile HVDC corridor linking Texas (ERCOT) to the Gulf Coast/Southeast grid (SERC). HVDC lines carry more power per unit right-of-way, have lower line losses over long distances, and in this case would allow for bidirectional power exchange between two major US grid regions that currently have almost no interconnection.
The Texas isolation problem (ERCOT is essentially an island grid) is both a resilience risk and a capacity optimization problem — excess Texas solar and wind cannot be exported to markets where it has value. Southern Spirit, if built, changes that. Completion target is early 2030s.
Positioning implications
- Transmission equipment manufacturers (Quanta Services, MYR Group, Otter Tail, Preformed Line Products) benefit from any scenario where transmission build rates increase. Reconductoring provides a faster-ramping demand signal than new construction.
- HVDC technology providers (Siemens Energy, ABB/Hitachi Energy) benefit from growing long-distance interconnection projects.
- RTOs and utilities with congested corridors face increasing regulatory and cost pressure to accelerate interconnection reform or face capacity adequacy problems.
- Developers with existing interconnection rights in congested markets hold a non-obvious asset — those positions are worth more as the queue backlog deepens.
Risks to the thesis
- FERC Order 2023 implementation produces worse outcomes than expected, deepening the backlog rather than clearing it.
- Right-of-way and permitting reform at the federal level stalls, making greenfield transmission as slow as ever.
- Distributed energy resources (rooftop solar, demand response, virtual power plants) reduce the need for long-distance transmission more than expected.
- Interconnection reform perversely accelerates “shovel-ready” fossil fuel peakers that have been waiting in the queue behind clean energy projects.
The frame: transmission is a multi-decade problem with no fast solution. The near-term investment thesis is reconductoring and equipment; the structural thesis is that grid congestion is a permanent tax on clean energy economics until transmission reform actually lands.