CAISO and utilities outline interconnection fixes as queue balloons to ~190 GW

CAISO Vice President Neil Miller told the committee the interconnection queue contains nearly 190 gigawatts of nameplate capacity but stressed a key distinction: most entries represent competing options rather than projects ready to build. “The queue is reflective of the amount of competition, not necessarily the number of projects that actually need to get built in a year,” he said.

Miller described CAISO’s intra‑cluster prioritization reforms that allow better‑placed projects to move forward without waiting for all applicants in a cluster; he said the change has helped roughly 4,000 MW of generation advance. Gary Chen of Southern California Edison described utilities’ process improvements — new digital tools, team restructuring and tariff updates — and projected SCE would interconnect about 6,000 MW per year over the next two years versus roughly 2,000–3,000 MW historically.

Panelists emphasized that only projects with commercial interest and PPAs generally trigger transmission work and that developers’ commercial decisions, material supply chains and local permitting remain critical path items. Utilities and CAISO urged continued coordination with CPUC and GoBiz to convert the large pipeline of queue applications into financed, shovel‑ready projects.