DOE Releases Roadmap to Speed Up Connecting Clean Projects to Grid

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released a new roadmap outlining solutions toward speeding up the interconnection of clean energy onto the nation’s transmission grid and clearing the existing backlog of solar, wind and battery projects seeking to be built. 

The Transmission Interconnection Roadmap, developed by DOE’s Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange (i2X), is meant to be a guide for setting what the agency calls aggressive success targets for improvement by 2030 by providing stakeholders with a set of 35 solutions organized around increasing data access, transparency and security for interconnection; improving interconnection process and timeline; promoting economic efficiency in interconnection; and maintaining a reliable grid. 

“Clearing the backlog of nearly 12,000 solar, wind, and storage projects waiting to connect to the grid is essential to deploying clean electricity to more Americans,” says U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. “Through the i2X program, the Biden-Harris Administration is accelerating the interconnection process by ensuring all stakeholders have better access to data and improved standards and procedures as we seek to develop and maintain a more efficient, reliable and clean grid.”

The roadmap also includes target metrics for interconnection reform such as shorter interconnection times, lower interconnection cost variance, increased completion rates and zero disturbance events attributed to modeling.