PJM Interconnection, the largest wholesale electricity market in the United States, has disclosed 715 new generation and storage proposals in its interconnection queue, with solar and battery projects leading by project count while natural gas retains the advantage in total nameplate capacity. The filing underscores a deepening structural tension: developers are overwhelmingly proposing clean energy and storage, yet the megawatt-scale contributions from gas-fired plants remain disproportionately large, reflecting both the current economics of firm capacity and the queue backlog that delays cleaner resources from reaching the grid.
The sheer volume of proposals — 715 distinct projects — illustrates the intensity of developer interest in the PJM footprint, which spans 13 states and the District of Columbia. Solar and storage together account for the majority of project entries, a pattern consistent with national trends where declining technology costs and federal tax incentives have made renewables-plus-storage the default choice for new investment. However, the capacity-weighted picture tells a different story: gas-fired proposals, though fewer in number, contribute more aggregate megawatts, a reminder that developers still view combined-cycle and peaker plants as the most bankable path to meeting PJM’s capacity market requirements.
This divergence between project count and capacity contribution is not merely statistical; it has direct consequences for resource adequacy and decarbonization timelines. PJM’s capacity auction rules continue to favor resources that can offer firm, dispatchable output across all hours, a criterion that gas meets natively but that solar and storage must satisfy through duration and hybridization strategies. Meanwhile, the interconnection queue itself has become a bottleneck, with study timelines stretching years and withdrawal rates remaining high. The “Hunger Games” characterization reflects the competitive scramble for limited injection rights and the financial risk developers absorb while awaiting interconnection agreements.
Reform efforts are underway, including PJM’s transition to a cluster-based study process and FERC’s Order No. 2023, which mandates stricter site control and financial commitment requirements to curb speculative entries. Yet the fundamental mismatch — between where capital wants to flow and where the market rules direct it — persists. Until capacity accreditation methodologies fully recognize the reliability contribution of long-duration storage and hybrid resources, and until transmission planning anticipates rather than reacts to generation siting patterns, the queue will remain a leading indicator of ambition rather than a reliable predictor of what actually gets built.
Read the full report at CleanTechnica.