PJM’s map of service territory Image: PJMĪs states in the market have moved to adopt more solar, specifically New Jersey, Illinois, and Virginia, PJM has had to reconsider how it operates, carefully monitoring how each project plays into overall system reliability, an expectedly slow process. Within this operational area, renewable energy resources have not long been a major feature in the distribution mix, with wind, solar and hydropower plants making up roughly 6% of that mix. Part of PJM’s issue is the historic operation of the wholesale electricity market that it operates, in a region that spans from parts of Illinois, Michigan, and Indiana, to the mid-Atlantic, as far north as New Jersey and as far south as parts of North Carolina. In terms of a real-life outlook, PJM released an outline of pathways it could take to achieving 50% renewable energy across its grid by 2035, a far cry from the Biden Administration’s call to achieve 100% carbon-fee electricity by the same year. We simply cannot afford to have such a lengthy delay for the country's largest grid operator if there's any chance of meeting this goal. Most current interconnection policies handle each request on a project-by-project basis, and were developed prior to the popularization of rooftop solar and other distributed energy resources (DER).Īnd while time can be spent identifying specific shortcomings and necessary improvements of current interconnection standards, the reality of the situation is that PJM’s proposal threatens to stall or lead to the cancellation of thousands of projects, leave developers in dire financial straits, and damage the efficacy of state and federal commitments to transitioning this country to a renewably-powered grid.ģ/6 To achieve President Biden's goal of 80% clean by 2030 and 100% by 2035, we have to install roughly 100 GW/year of clean energy. According to PJM, the increased economic viability of solar energy projects, rapidly-scaling corporate interest in investing in solar, state-level energy policies, and the Biden administration’s continued commitment of expanding the resource have all contributed to a massive influx of new project interconnection requests, and a queue that grows considerably by the day.Īs outlined by the Interstate Renewable Energy Council’s Gwen Brown and Sky Stanfield in a recent op-ed in pv magazine USA, literally every grid-connected project must go through the interconnection process, a process which is not designed to deliver timely results, nor handle a backlog of such magnitude. The proposal is outlined in PJM’s Interconnection Process Reform Task Force (IPRTF) Update, which was presented on January 24. PJM Interconnection, the largest electrical grid operator in the US is proposing a two-year pause on reviewing interconnection requests for its eastern US regional transmission network, as the operator looks to work through its more than 1,200 energy project backlog, with most of these projects being solar.įor newly-proposed projects the wait could be much, much longer.
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