Thousands of power projects are waiting for a grid connection
Berkeley Lab counted about 8,200 active generation and storage projects seeking transmission connections at the end of 2025. For projects that reached operation in 2025, the median wait exceeded five years in regions with data.
The short version
- About 8,200 generation and storage projects were active in the studied queues at the end of 2025.
- The median request-to-operation time exceeded five years for projects completed in 2025 in regions with available records.
Why it matters. Announcing a power plant is not the same as getting its electricity onto the grid. Connection studies, upgrades and project completion sit between proposed capacity and usable supply.
A project on paper cannot supply a server
The 2026 Queued Up report puts a scale on the connection pipeline: roughly 8,200 active projects at the end of 2025. The plants that actually reached operation in 2025 had spent a median of more than five years between request and operation, where records were available.
That interval is not a measure of activist-caused delay. It covers a route from requesting a connection to reaching service; a project must also resolve its own development and construction requirements.
The missing link is literal
Grid operators study proposed connections to identify equipment and upgrades, and to assign their costs. A generator needs a workable route into the network, not merely permission to build on a site.
The dataset covers generation and storage, not data-center load connections. It cannot tell us what percentage of data centers are blocked.
Explore ten named power projects to see how a construction permit, a financing decision and commercial operation differ. Their capacities are not interchangeable: a transmission line moves electricity, a generator produces it, and a battery shifts it in time.
The supporting record
Berkeley Lab reports about 8,200 active generation and storage projects seeking transmission interconnection at the end of 2025.
In regions with data, projects built in 2025 had a median interval of more than five years between their interconnection request and commercial operation.
What we do not yet know
- Which currently queued projects will ultimately be built, and the cause of delay for each one.
Original documents, with context
Sources you can inspect
1. Research report · Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory / GridTracker
Queued Up: 2026 edition
Generation and storage requests through 2025, not data-center load requests. Queue volume is proposed capacity, not a construction forecast. Data licensed CC BY 4.0.
Publication: 2026-05 · Checked: 2026-09-07
Source record: lbl-queues-2026
Location in source: Abstract, scope and key highlights; linked project-level workbook
Corrections & additional evidence · support@aipublicopinion.com
