11.8 GW of Power Is Queued in Rhode Island

Eleven-point-eight gigawatts of proposed generation capacity is queued in Rhode Island. That figure — 11.8 GW across 123 projects, as of the sealed grid-queue snapshot on June 11, 2026 — sits against a national backdrop of 1600.7 GW across 10,618 projects. Rhode Island's queue is small by project count but notable for its capacity density and for one distinctive data characteristic: every single project in the state's feed carries unknown status.

Before unpacking that, the essential disclaimer: a queue position is a request to connect, not a built, approved, or financed project. Interconnection queues are aspirational. A large share of projects withdraw before construction. The data here is a census of what developers have applied for, not a forecast of what will be built.

This report covers 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. This is a census of the published queues, not of every project on every grid in the country.

Rhode Island Queue vs. Its Peers

The comparison table below anchors Rhode Island in the ISO-NE network and against peer states in the same regional operator. ISO-NE covers New England and in this snapshot holds 1,752 total projects and 193.1 GW of total capacity, with a median project size of 26 MW — significantly smaller than the national median of 150 MW. Rhode Island sits inside that ISO-NE context.

Rhode Island's 20 MW median project size is the most distinctive feature in this comparison. Where the national median is 150 MW and even ISO-NE's own median sits at 26 MW, Rhode Island's median of 20 MW points to a queue composed largely of small distributed resources — rooftop-adjacent or small commercial solar, small storage, and similar.

The largest single project in the queue, "1200 MW Controllable ETU," is an outlier that skews total capacity considerably upward. Small medians with large top-end entries typically mean the queue is heavily populated by modest projects with a handful of large ones anchoring the total.

Connecticut's queue leads with an "Other" top fuel at 31.4% — different from the typical Solar dominance seen in Massachusetts and Maine. Rhode Island follows the ISO-NE solar pattern at 47.2% Solar by project count.

For Rhode Island specifically, its 123 projects and 11.8 GW places it roughly in line with New Hampshire (138 projects, 11.1 GW) — a comparable state by both project count and aggregate capacity. That consistency is meaningful context when reading the state's individual numbers.

Key Findings

• Rhode Island: 123 projects, 11.8 GW total capacity as of June 11, 2026, per the sealed interconnection-queue snapshot.

• Median project size is 20 MW — well below the national median of 150 MW, indicating a queue composed predominantly of small distributed resources.

• Solar leads at 47.2% of projects by count, with 58 Solar projects totaling 687 MW.

• Wind carries the largest capacity block, with 13 projects totaling 3,892 MW — a per-project average well above the median.

• 100.0% of Rhode Island projects carry unknown status — a feed characteristic, not a data error (see Methodology).

• The largest single project is "1200 MW Controllable ETU" at 1,200 MW.

Rhode Island's Queue at a Glance

The 100.0% unknown status is the defining data characteristic of Rhode Island's queue snapshot. ISO-NE's published feed does not carry project-level status codes for all projects, and the bucketing rules used in this research assign those records to "unknown." This does not mean the projects are inactive, abandoned, or approved — it means the ISO's feed does not include the information needed to classify their status. Readers should not interpret "unknown" as "probably dead." Similarly, the 0.0% withdrawn and 0.0% still-in-queue figures are feed artifacts, not statements about project activity.

A queue position is a request to connect, not a built or approved project. Rhode Island's 100.0% unknown-status figure reflects ISO-NE's feed structure, not a data gap. Projects labeled unknown may be anywhere in the interconnection process.

What the Fuel Mix Signals

Rhode Island's fuel distribution offers a concrete read on what developers are applying for in the state.

Solar dominates by project count — 58 of 123, or 47.2%. But Solar carries only 687 MW. Meanwhile Wind has 13 projects and 3,892 MW — the largest capacity block in the state's queue despite being the fourth-largest category by project count. That inversion is the key interpretive signal: Rhode Island's wind projects, though few in number, are large. Its solar projects are numerous but small. This is consistent with offshore wind development patterns in the New England area, where individual offshore projects can represent substantial capacity in a single application.

Natural Gas at 21 projects and 2,507 MW is another sizable capacity block. Gas-fired generation in ISO-NE territory has historically played a reliability role. Battery Storage at 20 projects and 2,623 MW reflects the broader storage trend visible across the national queue, where Battery Storage accounts for 2,824 projects nationally.

The "Other" category (11 projects, 2,110 MW) covers fuel types that do not sort into the primary keyword buckets. In ISO-NE's feed, this can include transmission-related entries and multi-fuel configurations.

Bold stat: Wind: 13 projects, 3,892 MW — largest capacity block in Rhode Island's queue.

Bold stat: Solar: 58 projects, 687 MW — most projects by count, smallest per-project average.

Solar holds 47.2% of Rhode Island's projects by count but carries only 687 MW. Wind holds 13 projects yet accounts for 3,892 MW. The count-versus-capacity inversion is the key interpretive signal in this state's fuel mix.

Methodology

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

Honesty statement: All figures are computed directly from 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.

Scope: Generation and storage projects whose point of interconnection falls within Rhode Island, as reported by ISO-NE. This snapshot covers 5 ISOs and 28 states. It is a census of the published queues, not of every project on every grid in the country.

Fuel bucketing: Vendor fuel and technology labels differ by ISO and are grouped into Solar, Battery Storage, Wind, Natural Gas, Hybrid and Other by keyword.

Status bucketing: 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. ISO-NE's feed does not provide project-level status fields for all records; those projects are classified as unknown. The 100.0% unknown-status figure for Rhode Island reflects this ISO's feed structure.

How this data is produced:

1. Collect. The grid-queue clock fetches ISO-NE's published interconnection queue on a daily schedule.

2. Normalize. Project records are parsed, fuel labels are keyword-bucketed, and the point-of-interconnection state is extracted.

3. Seal. Each daily snapshot is content-hashed and stored in an append-only ledger, preserving the exact data as published.

4. Aggregate. State-level summaries are computed from the sealed snapshot for this report.

This is a cross-sectional report: it reflects one snapshot day, June 11, 2026. No comparison to prior snapshots is made here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why do all 123 Rhode Island projects have unknown status?

A: ISO-NE's published feed does not include project-level status codes for all records. The bucketing methodology assigns those projects to the "unknown" category. This is a characteristic of ISO-NE's data structure, not a sign that the projects are inactive or invalid.

Q: The largest project is called "1200 MW Controllable ETU" — what is an ETU?

A: An Energy Transfer Unit (ETU) is a term used in ISO-NE's interconnection process to describe a study or transmission upgrade associated with a generator interconnection request. A controllable ETU involves a mechanism for managing power flow. The project name as it appears in the ISO feed is "1200 MW Controllable ETU"; 1,200 MW is its registered capacity in this snapshot.

Q: Why is Solar the top fuel by count but Wind the top by capacity in Rhode Island?

A: Solar projects in Rhode Island are predominantly small — residential, commercial, or small community-scale installations. Wind projects, by contrast, are large. New England has seen offshore wind development applications that carry hundreds of megawatts per project. The difference in per-project scale between these two fuel types produces the count-versus-capacity inversion visible here.

Q: Is Rhode Island's 11.8 GW total likely to be built?

A: A queue position is a request to connect, not a build commitment. Nationally, 36.5% of projects across all covered ISOs carry withdrawn status in feeds that report it. Many projects that enter the queue withdraw during or after interconnection studies. The 11.8 GW total should be read as developer applications, not a pipeline of confirmed projects.

Q: How does Rhode Island fit within ISO-NE overall?

A: ISO-NE covers the six New England states and holds 1,752 total projects and 193.1 GW in this snapshot. Rhode Island's 123 projects are a fraction of the ISO's total, comparable in scale to New Hampshire's 138 projects. For a fuller view of the region, see the ISO-NE interconnection queue report and the national index.

Automate Queue Tracking

Monitoring Rhode Island's ISO-NE queue manually — checking feed updates, comparing project lists, routing new entries to analysts — is a repeatable task that can be automated.

US Tech Automations builds workflow automations that ingest grid-queue data from public ISO feeds, flag project additions or status changes, and route signals to the teams that need them. This is data-ingestion and alerting automation, not a prediction system. Learn more at the workflow platform, or explore the solar interconnection queue data to understand the fuel type that leads Rhode Island by project count.

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