6,687 Projects Waiting to Connect: U.S. Grid Queue

The largest fuel bucket in this census is not Solar. On September 1, 2026 the USTA Interconnection Queue Index sealed 6,687 generation and storage projects across 4 grid operators, and 33.3% of them land in Other — a labeling mix, not a fuel story this page is going to invent.

Generation and storage projects listed by the grid operators in the current allowed source universe, as captured by US Tech Automations’ sealed grid snapshots. Sources withheld from collection are excluded even when older rows remain in the local archive. This is a census of the named covered queues, not of every project on every grid in the country.

The covered operators are CAISO, ISO-NE, NYISO, and SPP. ERCOT and MISO are the 2 withheld sources. A coverage change is not a market event, and a queue position is a request to connect, not a built or approved plant. The July national index is a separate sealed day; this page does not subtract from it.

Other at 33.3% is a labeling mix across operator feeds, not a new national technology.

6,687 projects sit in 4 covered queues on September 1, 2026.

Key Takeaways

• 6,687 projects carry 1,222,062 MW of requested capacity (1222.1 GW), with a median size of 100 MW.

• Other is the top fuel label at a 33.3% share — 2,225 projects.

• 3,214 projects (48.1%) are withdrawn; among projects with a known status the withdrawn share is 65.1%.

• 1,747 projects (26.1%) carry unknown status, matching ISO-NE's entire 1,747-project count.

• The California ISO, listed here as CAISO, holds 2,278 projects. ERCOT and MISO are withheld.

The Queue, Frozen on One Day

An interconnection queue is the public list of projects that have asked a grid operator for permission to connect. The unit on this page is that request. It is not a construction start, a financing close, or a plant that will show up on a load-resource table next year.

The 4 covered operators span 29 states in this freeze. That is the footprint of the feeds that are in the current allowed source universe, not a claim that the other states have empty queues. Utilities outside these 4 operators are simply not in the census.

Requested capacity totals 1,222,062 MW, published also as 1222.1 GW. The median project is 100 MW, which is a typical utility-scale request, not a rooftop. The largest single listing is ATLAS COMPLEX at 3,200 MW.

Other leads the fuel mix at a 33.3% share.

The July national queue index used the same sealed-day method on a different freeze. This September page does not treat that earlier edition as a baseline for growth, decline, or "the queue got shorter." Coverage here is 4 operators with ERCOT and MISO withheld, and a coverage change is not a market event.

Status Mix Across the Covered Operators

Each operator 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 operators drop withdrawn projects from their feed entirely.

48.1% of the sealed projects are already withdrawn.

Read 48.1% with the unknown row in view. 1,747 projects have no status label at all, and that count is identical to ISO-NE's 1,747 projects. ISO-NE's withdrawn share is 0.0% for the same reason SPP's withdrawn share is 0.0%: a feed that does not keep withdrawn rows, or does not publish status, cannot show a withdrawal rate. Among projects whose status is known, the withdrawn share is 65.1%.

Operational listings are 323. That bucket is the small set of rows the operators explicitly mark in-service or commercial operation. It is not "the grid added 323 plants." Still-in-queue listings are 1,403, or 21.0% — the slice that is still a live request on this freeze.

ISO-NE's 1,747 projects equal the national unknown-status count. That is a feed gap, not idle generation.

Fuel Labels, Including the Other Bucket

Vendor fuel and technology labels differ by ISO and are grouped into Solar, Battery Storage, Wind, Natural Gas, Hybrid and Other by keyword. Quote the top bucket even when the label is Other: that is a labeling mix, not a fuel to invent.

Other holds 2,225 projects and 405,327 MW. Solar holds more named-technology rows at 1,769, but Battery Storage's 242,957 MW sits above Solar's 218,654 MW — storage requests in this freeze are fewer and heavier than solar requests. Wind is 1,003 projects and 211,376 MW. Natural Gas is 363 projects and 113,579 MW. Hybrid is 99. Hydro, Nuclear, and Coal are thin: 19, 15, and 9.

The Other bucket is not a secret fourth fuel. NYISO's own top label is Other at 97.7%, and the technology table later in this page puts 1,601 of the national Other rows on NYISO. That is why a national "Other leads" headline would be a misread if it were treated as a buildout of mystery plants. It is mostly one operator's taxonomy refusing to map cleanly.

ISO-NE's top label is also Other, at 31.3%. The California ISO, by contrast, is Solar-led at 46.1% inside its own queue. SPP is Wind-led at 34.5%. Those three operator-level labels are the honest way to read the national Other share: some queues classify, some queues dump.

The NYISO interconnection-queue report is the place to sit with that labeling gap at operator scale. This national page only needs it named so 33.3% is not mistaken for a fuel.

Operator by Operator

The California ISO is the largest covered queue by project count, with 2,278 listings and 492.2 GW of requested capacity. Credit: the California ISO. In the sealed tables the operator appears as CAISO. Its median request is 128 MW, its withdrawn share is 77.3%, its top fuel is Solar at 46.1%, and its largest listing is ATLAS COMPLEX. California the state holds 2,076 of those rows; the rest of the CAISO footprint shows up in places such as Nevada and Arizona.

ISO-NE holds 1,747 projects and 193.1 GW, but the median is 26 MW — much smaller typical requests than the California ISO or SPP. Its withdrawn share prints as 0.0% because the feed does not support that statistic. Its largest listing is Non-controllable objective ETU to enable 2400 MW injection. Massachusetts holds 605 of the ISO-NE rows.

NYISO holds 1,638 projects and 344.9 GW, with a 94 MW median and an 88.6% withdrawn share — the highest withdrawn print of the 4 operators. Its largest listing is Blue Sky Interconnect 2. Other at 97.7% is the fuel read, and 1,600 of NYISO's rows sit in that catch-all.

SPP holds 1,024 projects and 191.9 GW, with the largest median of the 4 at 155 MW. Withdrawn prints as 0.0%. Wind is the top fuel at 34.5%. Oklahoma holds 315 of the SPP rows. Hybrid's national 99 projects also sit on SPP.

The CAISO interconnection-queue report is the operator-level sibling for the California ISO freeze. Use it when the national table is too coarse for a siting decision.

States Inside the Covered Footprint

A state's numbers here are the rows those 4 operators publish for it. They are not every generation request physically located in the state, and they are not a state energy plan.

California leads on project count at 2,076 and 416.8 GW, Solar-led, with GEMINI WIND NORTH as its largest named listing. New York is 1,613 projects and 340.6 GW, Other-led, with Blue Sky Interconnect 2 as the largest name — the same NYISO labeling pattern at state scale.

Texas in this freeze is 109 projects and 22.7 GW, Wind-led, and the top peer is SPP. That is SPP's Texas footprint, not a claim about the withheld ERCOT queue. Reading Texas as "quiet" on this page would be a coverage error.

Arizona holds 72 projects and 33.0 GW, Solar-led, and names ATLAS COMPLEX as its largest listing — the same 3,200 MW name that is the national largest and the California ISO largest. Nevada holds 104 CAISO-peer projects. Colorado's 78 SPP-peer projects are Hybrid-led, matching the national Hybrid bucket sitting on SPP.

Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Connecticut are the ISO-NE state rows. Massachusetts is 605 and Solar-led, with 345 kV AC line as the largest name. Connecticut is Other-led at 322 and repeats the Non-controllable objective ETU to enable 2400 MW injection listing. Rhode Island's largest name is 1200 MW Controllable ETU. Vermont is Other-led at 109.

Oklahoma 315, Kansas 182, Nebraska 117, Missouri 66, and New Mexico 57 are the SPP-peer cluster in this table, Wind-led except Missouri (Battery Storage) and Colorado (Hybrid).

Technology Withdrawals and Who Holds Them

This table adds two things the fuel-mix table does not show: how often each technology withdraws nationally, and which single operator holds the most of it.

Other withdraws at 63.8%, the highest print in the table, and 1,601 of those rows sit on NYISO. Solar withdraws at 47.1%, with 1,051 of 1,769 solar rows on the California ISO. Battery Storage withdraws at 41.9%, with 689 rows on the California ISO. Wind withdraws at 33.0%, still CAISO-led at 405. Natural Gas is the ISO-NE-led bucket at 132 of 363 rows. Hybrid's 99 rows are all on SPP, with a 0.0% withdrawn print that matches SPP's feed behavior, not a claim that hybrid projects never leave a queue.

How This Census Is Sealed

All figures are computed directly from the named allowed sources in US Tech Automations’ sealed grid-queue snapshots; nothing is estimated, modeled, or extrapolated. Fuel and status labels are grouped from each operator’s own categories, and the grouping rules appear in the display set. A coverage change is not treated as a market event.

Public ISO/RTO interconnection-queue listings, via the grid-queue clock (sealed daily, content-hashed). Coverage is the 4 operators in the current allowed source universe — CAISO, ISO-NE, NYISO, SPP — across 29 states. ERCOT and MISO are withheld from collection even when older rows remain in a local archive. A utility outside those 4 footprints is not represented here, which is a coverage gap, not evidence it has no queued projects.

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.

1. Collect. Pull each allowed operator's published interconnection-queue feed on the clock day.

2. Normalize. Map each operator's own project, fuel, and status labels into shared fields.

3. Bucket. Group fuel labels by keyword and status labels into withdrawn / operational / still-in-queue / unknown.

4. Exclude. Leave withheld sources (ERCOT, MISO) out of every total, even if older archive rows exist.

5. Seal. Content-hash the aggregated snapshot so every published figure traces to one immutable daily capture.

This edition is cross-sectional. It makes no growth, surge, or decline claim.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does this index cover every U.S. utility interconnection queue?
A: No. Coverage is the 4 allowed operators — CAISO, ISO-NE, NYISO, and SPP — across 29 states. ERCOT and MISO are withheld. A utility outside that universe is not in any total on this page.

Q: Why is Other the top fuel at 33.3%?
A: Because operator labels do not line up. NYISO's own top label is Other at 97.7%, and 1,601 national Other rows sit on NYISO. That is a labeling mix. It is not a claim that a mystery fuel is being built.

Q: What does unknown status mean here?
A: The source feed did not publish a status label. Nationally, 1,747 projects (26.1%) are unknown, and that count matches ISO-NE's 1,747 projects. ISO-NE's withdrawn share of 0.0% should be read with that gap, not as a queue that never loses projects.

Q: Who is credited for the largest covered queue?
A: The California ISO, listed in the tables as CAISO, with 2,278 projects and 492.2 GW. Its top fuel is Solar at 46.1%. CAISO as a nickname is not the credit; the California ISO is.

Q: Is a queue position a plant that will get built?
A: No. It is a request to connect. 3,214 of 6,687 listings are already withdrawn (48.1%), and 65.1% of listings with a known status are withdrawn. ATLAS COMPLEX at 3,200 MW is the largest request, not a completed plant.

Q: Why are ERCOT and MISO missing?
A: They are the 2 withheld sources in the current allowed universe. Older archive rows for withheld sources are not folded back into this census. A coverage change is not a market event.

Put Grid Data to Work

A project developer comparing where to file the next request can read the operator table as a crowding map: the California ISO at 2,278 projects and 492.2 GW is a deep queue, NYISO at 1,638 is withdrawal-heavy, ISO-NE at 1,747 is status-dark, and SPP at 1,024 is the smaller of the 4 covered footprints. Re-pull the freeze on a cadence rather than treating one day as the siting answer.

An EPC contractor or equipment supplier reading demand can watch Solar (1,769), Battery Storage (1,185), and Wind (1,003) as named-technology pull, and treat Other (2,225) as a labeling warning rather than a purchase order. Energy buyers shopping a power purchase agreement can use the same split: Solar-led California versus Other-led New York are not the same kind of evidence.

US Tech Automations automates that recurring, cross-operator monitoring — watching the allowed feeds for status and fuel-label changes, then routing the rows that matter. See how that works for grid and energy teams.

Source: US Tech Automations Research — computed from the sealed daily interconnection-queue snapshot, September 1, 2026.