Atlas of AI Buildout

Grid friction · Power & Grid

The queue to plug in is longer than the grid itself

The US grid interconnection queue and data centres

2,061 GWwaiting in the US interconnection queue · grade A, Reported

About 8,200 US projects were actively seeking grid interconnection at the end of 2025: 1,312 GW of generation and 749 GW of storage. The entire installed US generating fleet is roughly 1,300 GW. The queue is larger than the grid.

Gas interconnection requests rose 86% in a year to 253 GW — a direct response to data-centre load that will not wait for a transmission build. This is why Memphis and Richland Parish appear on this map with on-site generation: developers are bypassing the queue rather than joining it, which is a rational response to a five-year wait and a serious problem for everyone else on that grid.

Berkeley Lab projects US data centres at 325–580 TWh by 2028, from 176 TWh in 2023. The spread between those two numbers is not measurement error. It is the range of outcomes depending on how much of the queue actually clears.

Source — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up, 2026 Edition (2026)
~8,200 active US projects at end-2025: 1,312 GW generation + 749 GW storage. Gas 253 GW (+86%).

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