I was counting the wrong thing. Counted properly, it is worse.
I was counting the wrong thing. Counted properly, it is worse.
Kenneth · 2026-08-21
*Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up 2026 Edition (CC BY 4.0),
complete interconnection request dataset through end-2025. Analysis my own.*
I sent Notes 001–008 to Joe Rand at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who
publishes the dataset they are built on, and asked him to correct me rather than
encourage me.
He was straight about what he had not done — *"I do not currently have capacity to
try to reproduce the analysis"* — so **nothing here is verified by LBNL and I am not
claiming it is.** But he made one suggestion:
*"One thing I would suggest is looking at outcomes weighted by capacity (MW),
rather than simply counts of interconnection requests, since the capacity metric
is more relevant for electric system operations and decision making."*
Every previous note counted requests. A 2 MW rooftop array and a 900 MW plant
each counted once. He is right that the grid does not care how many requests failed
— it cares how much capacity failed.
I expected this to soften my headline. The obvious objection to "93% of requests
fail" is that queues fill with small speculative applications that fail cheaply
while serious projects proceed. If that were true, weighting by megawatts would
pull the number down.
It does the opposite.
| Cohort | By request count | By megawatt | Requests | GW |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| pre-2014 | 70.4% | 82.5% | 2,449 | 369.2 |
| 2014–17 | 73.3% | 75.3% | 1,150 | 108.6 |
| 2018–21 | 93.4% | 97.0% | 2,418 | 204.1 |
| 2022–25 | 100.0% | 100.0% | 353 | 35.9 |
Every cohort is worse measured by capacity. The headline from Note 002 moves
from 93.4% to 97.0%.
2018–21 cohort, operators with at least 30 terminal outcomes:
| Operator | By count | By MW | Shift | n | GW |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IP | 48.8% | 93.4% | +44.6 | 84 | 8.8 |
| SRP | 61.7% | 85.3% | +23.6 | 47 | 16.9 |
| NWMT | 75.9% | 94.5% | +18.6 | 58 | 5.3 |
| BPA | 88.3% | 99.4% | +11.1 | 77 | 30.4 |
| ISO-NE | 82.6% | 93.1% | +10.5 | 425 | 34.9 |
| DUKE | 89.6% | 96.6% | +7.1 | 182 | 29.5 |
| NYISO | 94.6% | 98.8% | +4.3 | 515 | 75.9 |
| PJM | 93.4% | 97.0% | +3.6 | 2,418 | 204.1 |
| ERCOT | 60.7% | 63.2% | +2.6 | 544 | 93.9 |
| CAISO | 96.3% | 98.4% | +2.1 | 510 | 194.7 |
| SPP | 96.2% | 97.4% | +1.2 | 290 | 48.2 |
| FPL | 19.4% | 20.0% | +0.6 | 72 | 7.9 |
| MISO | 95.2% | 95.0% | −0.3 | 816 | 120.4 |
| PNM | 95.8% | 79.6% | −16.3 | 120 | 8.6 |
**Twenty-one of twenty-five operators look worse weighted by capacity than by
count.** Only PNM improves materially. MISO is flat.
**The plain reading: larger projects are withdrawn more often than smaller ones,
nearly everywhere.**
That is the opposite of the comfortable assumption, and it was invisible while I was
counting requests. A queue is not mostly small speculative noise failing harmlessly
around serious projects that proceed. **On this data the serious large projects fail
at a higher rate.**
Why, I do not know, and the dataset does not say. Larger projects trigger heavier
network upgrade obligations, longer study timelines and greater cost-allocation
exposure. All plausible. None of them tested here. As with every previous note:
the data shows what happened, not why.
One caution about the biggest numbers. IP, SRP and NWMT show the largest shifts
on small samples, where a handful of big withdrawals dominate. Those shifts are real
but fragile. PJM's +3.6 across 2,418 requests and 204 GW is the robust one.
ERCOT is still the outlier under either metric — 60.7% by count, 63.2% by
capacity, on 93.9 GW of terminal outcomes. This was the claim I was least sure of
when I published Note 003, and it is the one that has held up best. **A
small-sample explanation is now closed off.**
FPL holds at 19.4% and 20.0% on 72 requests and 7.9 GW. Small, but no longer
dismissible as an artefact of counting.
Terminal outcomes only — withdrawn and operational. Active requests are excluded
throughout, because a project still in the queue has neither failed nor succeeded.
Capacity is mw_1 + mw_2 + mw_3 from sheet 03. Cohorts by q_year. Operators
shown where the cohort holds at least 30 terminal outcomes.
Notes 001–008 stand as published. They count requests, they say so, and the
figures in them are correct for what they measure. **This note does not withdraw
them; it reports that they were measuring the less useful of two things.**
*The suggestion that produced this note was Joe Rand's, offered unprompted in reply
to a request to be corrected. He has not verified any of it, and any error here is
mine.*