ISO Minute: Inside the interconnection queue

ISO Minute is a video series featuring ISO New England employees speaking about their experiences working for the region’s independent system operator and supporting the ongoing evolution of the electric system.

Connecting a new resource to New England’s bulk power system requires careful study. ISO New England evaluates proposed projects looking to connect to the grid to determine how they could affect the reliability of the region’s transmission system.

Historically, projects have generally been studied one at a time on a “first-come, first-served” basis, outside of specific circumstances. Now the process is changing. In this ISO Minute, Jody Truswell, supervisor of Interconnection Services, shares how the new “first-ready, first-served” process studies all interconnection requests as a group, or cluster.

“The benefit of the new process is to be able to service the developers’ projects that are ready to go, ready to be built,” Truswell says. “They’ve done their homework before coming into the queue, and they’re making financial commitments, and that allows us to have more certainty when planning the system of the future.”

The cluster-study-based interconnection process was developed as a result of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order Nos. 2023 and 2023-A. The orders sought to address interconnection queue backlogs across the United States by prioritizing projects with a high likelihood of development and deterring speculative ventures.

Learn more about the interconnection queue process on the Order No. 2023 Key Project page.