Federal regulators have proposed major reforms to clear huge backlogs of solar, wind and storage projects waiting to interconnect to U.S. power grids.
20 June 2022
Years-long waiting times and potentially project-killing grid-upgrade costs are preventing hundreds of gigawatts’ worth of clean energy projects from being connected to U.S. power grids.
FERC voted unanimously to propose the rules, underscoring the consensus that today’s interconnection processes need to be reformed to bring energy resources online more quickly to provide low-cost and reliable power to increasingly stressed grids, FERC Chair Richard Glick said in a Thursday press conference.
Glick cited recent analysis showing that projects are lingering for an average of three and a half years in interconnection queues, and that less than one-quarter of the solar, wind and energy-storage projects that have sought to interconnect have actually succeeded in doing so.
“This is not a partisan issue at all,” said Glick, a Democrat appointed by President Trump and named as FERC chair by President Biden. ?“Everyone agrees this is a problem.” While FERC has undertaken interconnection reforms in the past, ?“this is far and away the most aggressive” such effort in the agency’s history, he said.
https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/policy-regulation/ferc-…
This is good economic news for consumers.
Jaak