The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order on Tuesday opening an expedited review of interconnection study timelines at PJM, MISO and ERCOT, giving each operator ninety days to justify processes that now average close to four years from request to executed agreement.
The order is unusual in its framing. Rather than proposing a rule, the Commission has asked the three operators to demonstrate that their current timelines are consistent with the obligation to provide interconnection service on terms that are not unduly discriminatory — an obligation that has been in statute since 1935 and rarely invoked against processing delay.
Two commissioners wrote separately. The concurrence argued the review should extend to all regional operators rather than the three with the largest queues. The dissent argued that the Commission’s own 2023 reform order has not been fully implemented and that a second proceeding will divert staff from the first.
Grid operators have consistently attributed the backlog to volume rather than process, noting that request volume has increased roughly sevenfold since 2018 while study staff has roughly doubled. That defence is factually correct and, in the Commission’s framing, beside the point.
Comments are due in ninety days. Whatever the Commission decides, no project currently in a queue will connect sooner because of it.