6.8 GW of Power Is Queued in South Dakota

6.8 GW of power is queued to connect in South Dakota, as of July 9, 2026, per the sealed interconnection-queue snapshot — 55 projects totaling 6,809 MW. Set against the 1945.7 GW total capacity sitting in interconnection queues across the full 12,260-project, 36-state, 6-ISO edition this snapshot covers, South Dakota's slice is a small fraction of the national picture, though it is not a small queue by every measure inside its own footprint.

This is a census of the published queues that our grid-queue clock captures daily, 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 our sealed daily grid snapshots. Every one of South Dakota's 55 projects is a request to connect, not a built, approved, or financed project — a large share of queue positions nationally end up withdrawn before construction.

Key Findings

• South Dakota's interconnection queue holds 55 projects totaling 6,809 MW (6.8 GW), according to the sealed interconnection-queue snapshot, against a 1945.7 GW national total across this edition.

• Wind accounts for 33 of South Dakota's 55 queued projects, a 60.0% share of the count.

• 50.9% of South Dakota's queued projects have withdrawn, close to the 43.6% share across the full edition.

• The largest single project queued in South Dakota, Astoria 345kV substation, carries 1,144 MW.

• MISO's queue accounts for 43 of South Dakota's 55 projects, according to the sealed interconnection-queue snapshot — the remainder sit in a different regional grid operator's queue.

South Dakota Queue at a Glance, July 9, 2026

A 200 MW median against a 6,809 MW total puts South Dakota's typical project size in line with several of its neighbors in this edition, while the 1,144 MW Astoria 345kV substation entry sits well above that median — the largest single project of any state covered in this specific report.

South Dakota's largest project, Astoria 345kV substation, carries 1,144 MW.

South Dakota's queue totals 6.8 GW against a 1945.7 GW national total.

South Dakota's snapshot reports 6 projects as operational — explicitly in-service or in commercial operation, not merely advanced in the queue. That is a small slice of the 55 total, and it should not be read as a forecast for how many of the remaining 21 still-in-queue projects will eventually reach that same status.

South Dakota's 55 projects split across withdrawn (28), still in queue (21), and operational (6) — all three status buckets populated in this state's own feed.

The Fuel Mix

South Dakota's queue is grouped into the same six technology buckets used across every state in this edition — Solar, Battery Storage, Wind, Natural Gas, Hybrid, and Other — built from vendor labels that differ by ISO and standardized by keyword, not by our research team independently verifying each project's equipment.

Wind

Wind is the category that defines South Dakota's queue: 33 projects totaling 4,589 MW, a 60.0% share of the count — well above the 33.8% Solar share that tops the full national edition, and a reminder that this state's queue runs in the opposite direction from the national pattern. One neighbor that shares that Wind-led profile is North Dakota.

Wind holds a 60.0% share of South Dakota's queue.

Solar and Hybrid

Solar holds 10 projects and 1,308 MW, and Hybrid holds 5 projects and 712 MW. Both trail Wind by a wide margin on project count, consistent with a queue where one resource has drawn the bulk of developer interest in this state. Solar's 10-project count is still large enough to be a meaningful secondary category rather than a rounding error, and Hybrid's 712 MW shows that even a 5-project bucket can carry real capacity when individual filings run large.

Battery Storage

Battery storage holds 7 projects and 200 MW, the smallest capacity total of the four fuel categories reported for South Dakota even though it is not the smallest by project count. That gap between count and capacity is common in storage categories generally, where individual projects can be sized quite differently from one filing to the next. Across all four categories, Wind alone carries more capacity (4,589 MW) than Solar, Hybrid, and Battery Storage combined, which is the clearest single number behind this report's lead: South Dakota's queue is, above everything else, a wind queue.

How South Dakota Compares

South Dakota's 6.8 GW is a small piece of the 1945.7 GW tracked across this entire edition — but scale alone does not tell the whole story. Only 43 of South Dakota's 55 projects sit inside MISO, a system running 3,792 projects and 299.5 GW overall with Solar as its own top fuel at a 46.4% share; the remaining South Dakota projects fall under a different regional operator, meaning this state's queue is split rather than confined to one ISO's study process.

Reading South Dakota's capacity purely against the 1945.7 GW national total risks making a genuinely large in-state queue look negligible. 6.8 GW is still enough to matter to a developer, an EPC contractor, or a utility planner working inside South Dakota specifically — national scale and local relevance are two different questions, and this report answers the second one.

Against North Dakota's 109-project, 14.2 GW queue, South Dakota runs roughly half the project count and less than half the capacity, even though both states share Wind as their top fuel. Kentucky's 62-project, 3.4 GW queue is closer to South Dakota in project count but smaller on capacity, and Kentucky's top fuel — Solar — points in a completely different direction than either Dakota despite Kentucky also reporting entirely through MISO.

Methodology

All figures in this report 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: vendor fuel and technology labels differ by ISO and are grouped into Solar, Battery Storage, Wind, Natural Gas, Hybrid and Other by keyword — a research bucketing choice, not an official ISO taxonomy.

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; South Dakota's feed reports all three of withdrawn, still-in-queue, and operational statuses.

A queue position is a request to connect, not a built, approved, or financed project — interconnection queues are aspirational, and a large share of projects nationally withdraw before construction. This report is cross-sectional: it reflects one sealed snapshot date, July 9, 2026, not a trend over time.

The snapshot is produced through a fixed pipeline:

1. Collect. Pull each covered ISO/RTO's published interconnection-queue feed on a daily cadence.

2. Normalize. Standardize project names, fuel labels, and status values against each source's own published taxonomy.

3. Bucket. Group fuel labels into the six technology buckets and status values into the four status buckets described above.

4. Seal. Content-hash the normalized snapshot so every figure in this report traces back to one immutable daily capture.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: How much capacity is queued to connect in South Dakota?
A: 6,809 MW (6.8 GW) across 55 projects, according to the sealed snapshot dated July 9, 2026 — against a 1945.7 GW total across the full 12,260-project edition.

Q: What is the largest single project in South Dakota's queue?
A: Astoria 345kV substation, at 1,144 MW, according to the sealed snapshot — well above the state's 200 MW median project size.

Q: What does it mean for a project to be "queued to connect" in South Dakota?
A: It means a developer has filed an interconnection request with a grid operator covering South Dakota, asking for a study and eventual physical connection to the transmission system. It does not mean the project has permits, financing, or a construction date.

Q: Why does South Dakota show projects split across grid operators?
A: The sealed snapshot attributes 43 of South Dakota's 55 projects to MISO. Interconnection queues are organized by grid operator, not strictly by state border, so a state that sits at the edge of a regional footprint can have projects studied by more than one ISO/RTO.

Q: Does South Dakota's 50.9% withdrawal rate mean the state is a bad place to build?
A: Not necessarily — a similar withdrawal share is common across interconnection queues nationally (43.6% across the full 12,260-project edition) and often reflects speculative filings or developers moving to a more advanced queue position rather than a verdict on the state's grid.

Q: Why is Wind South Dakota's largest fuel category when Solar leads nationally?
A: The sealed snapshot shows Wind at a 60.0% share of South Dakota's 55 projects, while Solar carries the largest national share at 33.8%. The gap reflects what developers are actually proposing state by state — South Dakota's wind resource has drawn more of these specific filings than solar has.

Put Grid Data to Work

South Dakota's queue data fits a narrow set of buyers with a real, recurring reason to watch it. Project developers siting the next wind, solar, or storage filing can use the 200 MW median and the 60.0% Wind share as a baseline for how this specific queue is already composed before filing. EPC contractors and equipment suppliers reading demand can watch the fuel mix — Wind's 33-project lead over every other category — to decide where to route turbine, inverter, and interconnection-equipment sales effort.

Utilities and policy researchers tracking regional grid planning can use the MISO/other-ISO split — 43 of 55 projects in MISO — to understand how much of South Dakota's queue falls under which operator's study process. Analysts building a state-by-state watchlist can use South Dakota's 1,144 MW largest project and 200 MW median as fixed reference points for how this queue's size distribution looks today, distinct from the neighboring states it sits alongside in this same edition.

Each of these is a recurring monitoring job, not a one-time read: queue snapshots change as projects advance, withdraw, or move status, and the value is in catching the next change, not just this one.

US Tech Automations automates that monitoring — watching feed changes across ISOs, routing the resulting signals, and drafting outreach off them — so a team does not have to re-pull and re-normalize six ISO feeds by hand every week. See the platform for agentic workflows built around exactly that kind of recurring data-monitoring task.

Source: US Tech Automations Research — computed from the sealed daily interconnection-queue snapshot, July 9, 2026.