How Much Natural Gas Is Waiting to Connect?

How much natural gas is waiting to connect to the U.S. grid? On the sealed snapshot of June 11, 2026, the answer is 522 natural gas projects asking to connect 177.5 GW across the interconnection queues we track. That makes gas a small slice by count — far behind solar, storage, and wind — but a heavyweight per project, with the highest median size of any technology.

The other answer worth giving up front: gas applicants are the least likely renewable-era newcomers to walk away. Just 24.1% of natural gas entries are withdrawn, the lowest withdrawal rate of any major technology in the queues. Still, the standing rule holds — a queue position is a request to connect, not a built, approved, or financed project. This report reads the national gas picture from one sealed day across 5 ISOs and RTOs, with each part of the queue broken out on its own.

Natural gas counts 522 projects and 177.5 GW across the covered queues.

This is a census of the published queues, not of every project on every grid in the country. Generation and storage projects sitting in the interconnection queues of the U.S. grid operators (ISOs and RTOs) that publish a machine-readable queue, as captured by US Tech Automations' sealed daily grid snapshots, are the scope.

What a Natural Gas Queue Entry Covers

A natural gas entry in an interconnection queue is a request to connect a gas-fired generator — most often a combined-cycle plant or a peaking combustion turbine — to the high-voltage grid. The raw vendor labels vary, which is why we group them: vendor fuel and technology labels differ by ISO and are grouped into Solar, Battery Storage, Wind, Natural Gas, Hybrid and Other by keyword. The largest gas entry on the snapshot, SIOUX, is logged at 2,200 MW, and one ERCOT entry, Prairie Ridge (Gas - CC), carries the combined-cycle marker in its own name.

The median natural gas request is 293 MW, the largest median of any technology.

Key Findings

• 522 natural gas projects are in the covered queues, the smallest major-technology count, according to the sealed interconnection-queue snapshot.

• Natural gas requests 177.5 GW of capacity across those projects.

• The gas withdrawal rate is 24.1% — the lowest of any major technology.

• The median gas request is 293 MW, larger than solar, wind, or storage.

• The largest gas entry, SIOUX, is 2,200 MW.

Natural Gas at a Glance

The gas profile is the inverse of solar: few projects, big units, steady commitment.

A 293 MW median against a 522-project count tells the story: gas applicants build big and apply rarely. Where solar files thousands of mid-size farms, gas files hundreds of large plants. The capacity-per-project is the highest in the queues, which is why 522 projects still total 177.5 GW.

This profile reflects the economics of thermal generation. A combined-cycle gas plant is a multi-year, capital-heavy undertaking that does not get filed on speculation the way a solar option does. By the time a gas project reaches the interconnection queue, a developer has usually lined up fuel supply, a site, and a financing path.

That front-loaded seriousness is the mechanism behind the low withdrawal rate — the filings are simply more committed on average than the renewable filings around them. The flip side is that gas adds little to the project count and concentrates its weight in a small number of very large requests. With only 522 projects carrying 177.5 GW, a single large entry like the 2,200 MW SIOUX plant moves the gas total more than any one solar farm moves its much larger 4,145-project field.

The Status Breakdown

Gas deserves a section-by-section read of its status buckets, because each tells a different part of the commitment story.

Withdrawn

126 natural gas projects are withdrawn, a 24.1% share — the gentlest churn of any major technology. Compared with solar's 45.1% and hybrid's 48.4%, gas developers abandon the queue far less often, consistent with the heavier upfront commitment a large thermal plant represents.

Still in Queue

239 gas projects remain active, a 45.8% share — the largest single status bucket for the technology. An active gas position represents real intent to connect dispatchable capacity, the kind of firm generation that grids lean on when renewables are not producing.

Operational

25 gas entries read as operational — explicitly in-service or in commercial operation. That is more than solar's 17 or storage's 4, reflecting that some gas feeds carry already-connected units.

Unknown

132 gas projects fall in the unknown bucket, a 25.3% share, because some feeds publish no status at all. Do not read these as active. Among gas projects with a known status, 32.3% are withdrawn.

Only 24.1% of natural gas entries are withdrawn — the lowest churn in the queues.

Where the Gas Sits by Operator

Gas does not lead the fuel mix at any single operator, but it concentrates where firm capacity is prized.

ISO-NE leads gas with 132 projects, the most of any operator, even though Other is its top overall fuel. New England's winter reliability concerns and limited renewable siting keep gas prominent in that queue. ERCOT also carries large gas entries — Prairie Ridge (Gas - CC) is among them — alongside its storage-dominant mix. The ISO-NE interconnection queue report and the ERCOT interconnection queue report carry the operator detail.

The geography of gas in these queues maps onto where the grid most needs firm, on-demand power. New England's winter peaks strain a system with constrained pipelines and few large renewable sites, so dispatchable gas keeps showing up in ISO-NE's pipeline. Texas, by contrast, carries gas not because it lacks renewables but because its fast-growing load and energy-only market reward generation that can run whenever it is profitable. Two very different grids, the same conclusion: gas in the queue is a reliability and flexibility play, sitting underneath a renewable-led mix rather than competing with it head-on.

Natural Gas Against the Other Technologies

Gas is fourth by capacity at 177.5 GW and last among the majors by count, but first on commitment — its 24.1% withdrawal rate undercuts every other technology shown. The national context, 1600.7 GW across all buckets, makes gas a firm-capacity minority inside a renewables-led pipeline. The US interconnection queue index for June 2026 frames gas against the full total.

The contrast with hybrid is the sharpest line in the table. Hybrid projects withdraw at 48.4%, almost exactly double the 24.1% gas rate, even though both sit toward the bottom of the count rankings at 483 and 522 projects respectively. The difference is what each filing represents: a hybrid entry bundles generation and storage into a more complex, more conditional plan, while a gas entry is a single, well-understood asset class with a clear dispatch case.

For a reader trying to convert queue depth into a realistic prospect list, that gap is the whole point — raw project counts mean very different things depending on the technology behind them, and gas's small field is the most durable one in the set.

Methodology

Source: Public ISO/RTO interconnection-queue listings, via the US Tech Automations grid-queue clock (sealed daily, content-hashed).

All figures are computed directly from US Tech Automations' sealed daily grid-queue snapshots; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated. Fuel and status labels are grouped from each ISO's own categories, and the grouping rules appear in the display set.

The grid disclaimer applies throughout: a queue position is a request to connect, not a built, approved, or financed project. Even with gas's low withdrawal rate, the 177.5 GW figure is requested capacity, never a build forecast.

The bucketing rules: vendor fuel and technology labels differ by ISO and are grouped into Solar, Battery Storage, Wind, Natural Gas, Hybrid and Other by keyword. Each ISO publishes its own status taxonomy; statuses are grouped into withdrawn, operational (explicitly in-service or commercial operation), still-in-queue, and unknown for feeds that publish no status. Some ISOs drop withdrawn projects from their feed entirely, so a zero-withdrawal operator reflects a feed choice, not a clean queue.

How the clock builds a gas view:

1. Collect each covered ISO/RTO queue feed on the snapshot day, June 11, 2026.

2. Normalize vendor fuel strings so "gas", "CC", and "CT" variants land under Natural Gas.

3. Bucket status, then seal the day's aggregate with a content hash so the figures are frozen and reproducible.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much natural gas capacity is waiting to connect?
A: 177.5 GW across 522 projects on June 11, 2026. But a queue position is a request to connect, not a built, approved, or financed project, so that figure is requested capacity rather than supply that will arrive.

Q: Why is the gas withdrawal rate so much lower than solar?
A: Gas withdraws at 24.1% versus solar's 45.1%. A large thermal plant carries heavier upfront commitment and a clearer dispatchable-revenue case, so fewer speculative filings enter and fewer abandon the queue.

Q: Why is the median gas project so large?
A: The gas median is 293 MW, larger than solar, wind, or storage. Gas economics favor big combined-cycle and peaking units, so a smaller count of projects carries outsized capacity per entry.

Q: Which operator has the most gas?
A: ISO-NE leads gas with 132 projects, driven by New England reliability needs, even though Other is its top overall fuel. ERCOT also carries large gas entries inside a storage-led mix.

Q: How would a buyer act on this gas data?
A: An energy buyer or utility seeking firm capacity can read ISO-NE's 132-project depth as where dispatchable gas concentrates, then use the steadier 24.1% withdrawal rate to gauge how many active positions are realistic prospects.

Put Grid Data to Work

This gas picture fits three readers. Gas developers can use ISO-NE's 132-project lead and the low 24.1% withdrawal rate to judge how committed a regional gas pipeline is before filing. EPC contractors and turbine suppliers can read 177.5 GW of requested gas, concentrated in large units, as a high-value but low-volume order book and staff accordingly. Utilities and energy buyers chasing firm capacity can track which active gas projects survive the churn.

US Tech Automations builds the monitoring layer: watching queue feeds for status changes, routing each signal to the right desk, and drafting first-touch outreach when a project moves. The same sealed-snapshot discipline runs the permits research at https://permits.ustechautomations.com.

See how agentic workflows automate queue monitoring

Source: US Tech Automations Research — computed from the sealed daily interconnection-queue snapshot, June 11, 2026.