Queue the energy transition, literally

“Energy transition” is the power & renewable buzz-phrase of 2018. One way to visualize the current state of the energy transition is to look at the changes occurring in the generator interconnection queues across North America. These lists typical show the fuel/technology, size and status of the individual generation queue requests that have been submitted over time. Although the vast majority of queue requests are eventually withdrawn, looking at the yearly queue request trends can be illuminating. In this Insight we summarize and briefly discuss the yearly queue requests of most major RTOs/ISOs and selected non-RTO balancing authorities including 2018 through October. The data highlights past “transitions” and shows how some have fizzled. However, the data also suggests that recently there have been some very dramatic and perhaps unexpected changes in several interconnection queues which indicate that the energy transition to renewables may be accelerating rapidly.