A grid queue is not a fleet of power plants

The new observation

Berkeley Lab’s July 2026 announcement reports 2,061 gigawatts of active generation and storage proposals in US interconnection queues at the end of 2025, about 10% below the previous year. Its survey covers seven regional transmission organizations or independent system operators and 50 other balancing areas, representing approximately 98% of installed US generation capacity. The figure is a queue snapshot, not a measurement of completed construction. Read the dated Berkeley Lab announcement.

The accompanying Queued Up project page explains that connection approval is only one part of development. Other dependencies include land, permits, equipment, financing and buyers for the output. Its discussion also cautions against assuming the effects of recent queue reforms are already fully measurable. Inspect the Queued Up collection and methodology.

Keep the units and stages intact

A gigawatt describes power capacity, not a year’s delivered energy, project revenue or money available to a supplier. Our editorial reading rule is to keep the reported unit next to every number. Do not multiply a headline queue total by an assumed price and call the result an addressable market without an explicit model of which projects and buyers are relevant.

A useful research sketch separates a connection request, technical studies and agreements, commercial readiness, construction and operation. That is an illustrative dependency map, not a universal sequence: activities can overlap and a project can change or withdraw. Ask which stage your product serves and which event actually creates a purchasing decision.

For a software vendor serving developers, the buyer’s unresolved queue position might be the problem to investigate. For a hardware supplier, the same uncertainty might delay an order. These are hypotheses for customer research, not conclusions established by the aggregate dataset.

Policy changes are not realized outcomes

FERC’s explanation of Order No. 2023 describes changes including cluster-based studies, readiness requirements and measures addressing study delays. It also notes subsequent changes under Order No. 2023-A. That establishes the design of the reform, not proof that every region or project now has a predictable connection date. The explainer is not itself a legal document. Read FERC’s explanation and its limitations.

For an actual project, inspect the applicable operator process and project-specific documents with appropriate expertise. Do not substitute this national overview for engineering, investment or regulatory diligence.

A better founder interview

Our suggested interview starts with the last delayed project, not a forecast of the entire energy transition. Ask what decision was blocked, who had the necessary data, what work had to be repeated and which budget could pay to remove that friction.

Then test the proposed value against a concrete counterfactual: if this tool had existed, which decision would have changed, and when? Keep a record of projects it would not have helped. That negative sample can expose a serviceable niche—or show that the bottleneck is outside the product’s control.

The opportunity may be real while the headline denominator remains unsuitable. A credible research note should make room for both.