Utility Integration

One-in-five projects survives the ISO-NE interconnection process, report says

One-in-five projects survives the ISO-NE interconnection process, report says
(Courtesy: ISO New England)

Following a trend seen in other regions, interconnection costs in ISO-New England have risen, especially among projects that withdraw from the queue.

That is one finding of an interconnection cost analysis released in mid-June by the Energy Department’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The report is the latest in the lab’s ongoing analysis of interconnection costs for proposed generating capacity.

The report said that costs in ISO-NE have nearly doubled since 2018 compared to 2010-2017. It said interconnection costs are highest for onshore wind ($909/kW), followed by solar ($450/kW) and storage ($230/kW). 

More than 80% of onshore wind projects studied since 2018 have withdrawn their application, suggesting that high interconnection costs are factor. Natural gas ($91/kW) and offshore wind ($86/kW) have lower average costs, though the latter often depends on separately proposed merchant or pool transmission upgrades.

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The report said that at year-end 2022, ISO-NE had 35 GW of generation and storage actively seeking grid interconnection. The capacity consisted of offshore wind (14 GW), storage (12 GW), and solar (6 GW) projects.

The interconnection queue also included 2 GW of onshore wind, 0.1 GW of natural gas, and 0.8 GW of other resources. 

The queue currently has more than three times the active capacity as in 2014. A decade ago, nearly all proposed projects were powered by gas or wind. By 2019, the prime mover had shifted from natural gas to wind, which made up around 70% of proposed projects. 

The report said that most projects that apply for interconnection withdraw from the process. For interconnection requests from 2000-2017, only 19% of the capacity came online by year-end 2022.

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Larger projects typically cost more to interconnect, the report said. Most resource types do not offer economies of scale on a per-kilowatt basis, it said. The exception was for solar projects whose average costs fell from $541/kW for small projects (1-25 MW) to $190/kW for the largest projects (85-200 MW).

The report also said that wind and solar projects requesting capacity network resource (CNR) interconnection service have higher interconnection costs. Solar and onshore wind projects seeking to become CNRs averaged 118% and 33% higher costs than those seeking to become network resources (NRs). 

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