Roughly 2,600 gigawatts of generation capacity sit in the interconnection queue. That is more than double what the entire US grid produces today. The median project waits nearly five years to connect. Close to 80 percent withdraw before they get there.
Projects that survive the queue hit a physical wall. Transformer demand is up 116 percent since 2019, with lead times stretching to four years and prices running four to six times their 2022 levels. Eighty percent of power transformer supply is imported. Nearly $2 billion has been committed to new North American factory capacity. None of it comes online before 2028.