Solar Interconnection Queue Statistics 2026

How Many Gigawatts Are Still Waiting

2,061 gigawatts of total generation and storage capacity sat in US interconnection queues as of the end of 2025, down 10% from 2024’s total, though still below the peak of nearly 2,600 gigawatts recorded at the end of 2023. Solar accounts for 773 gigawatts of that queued capacity, itself a 19% year-over-year decrease. More than 750 gigawatts of interconnection requests, across all technologies, were withdrawn during 2025 alone, a meaningful part of why the total queue shrank even as new requests kept coming in.

The Multi-Year Wait Behind the Queue Number

Being in the queue and being connected are two different things. Only 32% of queued solar capacity has a drafted or executed interconnection agreement, the formal step that comes before a project can actually connect to the grid. Median time from submitting an interconnection request to signing that agreement ran well over 3 years in 2025, and time to commercial operation exceeds 5 years in the regions with data available to measure it. A project entering the queue today is looking at a multi-year process before it generates a single kilowatt-hour, not a paperwork delay measured in months.

Why So Many Projects Withdraw Before Ever Connecting

Withdrawal is not a rare outcome. Withdrawal rates remain above 40% even after a project has already signed its interconnection agreement, and 75% of capacity that entered queues between 2000 and 2020 had withdrawn by the end of 2025. LBNL’s own report states the underlying reason plainly: many projects that apply for interconnection will not ultimately be built, since entering a queue is only one of many steps in a project’s development process, not a commitment that guarantees completion. For a solar company or sales team relying on grid capacity assumptions, that withdrawal rate is worth factoring in as a real possibility, not an edge case.

What This Means Against Rising Electricity Rates

The interconnection backlog sits alongside a separate but related reality: the average US residential electricity price reached 17.30 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, part of a 13% nominal increase since 2022. Rising rates make new solar capacity more valuable to the grid at almost the exact moment new capacity is taking longer than ever to actually connect to it, a mismatch between demand for new generation and the physical and administrative pace of getting it online.

The Numbers

Sources

The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.

• American Public Power Association, citing LBNL’s Queued Up: 2026 Edition
• EIA, Electricity explained: factors affecting electricity prices

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