PJM's reformed queue drew 811 projects and 220 GW. History says most won't connect.

PJM's reformed queue drew 811 projects and 220 GW. History says most won't connect. PJM's overhauled interconnection queue pulled in 220 GW of proposals, but only 13% of past applicants ever reached operation, even as data centers drive half of US demand growth. Google's grid software was used to run PJM's first reformed interconnection queue cycle, which drew 811 projects totaling 220 GW of proposed capacity, POWER magazine reported on Thursday (2026-06-04).⁵ That matters because the queue is the chokepoint between America's power demand and the supply meant to meet it. Data centers now account for about half of US incremental demand growth, according to the IEA.¹ Get the queue wrong and the megawatts never arrive. The 220 GW headline flatters reality. Only 13% of capacity that filed interconnection requests between 2000 and 2019 had reached commercial operation by the end of 2024, the IEA found; 77% was withdrawn.¹ On that record, most of what sits in PJM's reformed queue will never deliver an electron. The demand side is not waiting. Global electricity consumption from data centers grew 17% in 2025, with AI-focused load surging 50%, the IEA said.¹ Those are the loads filing into queues like PJM's. The binding constraint is wires, not generators. America needs roughly 5,000 miles of new high-voltage transmission¹, and regional operators outside Texas have asked FERC for more time to meet the transmission-upgrade programs it ordered back in late 2021.² A faster queue feeding a grid that cannot carry the power solves only half the problem. That is part of why a planning tool earns its keep. Software can squeeze more out of lines already strung: the IEA calculated on April 10th that very-high-voltage lines can safely carry 20-30% above their rated capacity for around 90% of the time.³ Studying queue projects against true line capacity, rather than nameplate limits, is how 220 GW of requests becomes a tractable problem. Google is also buying its way around the bottleneck rather than waiting in line. It has contracted 1 GW of demand-response capacity with utilities including the Tennessee Valley Authority and Entergy Arkansas, signed a hydropower framework with Brookfield to relicense two Susquehanna River dams in Pennsylvania, inside PJM's footprint, under a plan contemplating up to 3 GW nationally, and contracted more than 22 GW of clean energy since 2010.⁵ There is a political clock running too. A data-center backlash is brewing in America over who pays for the grid build-out, even if rising electricity bills cannot yet be pinned on the data centers themselves.⁴ Where capacity costs already flow through to consumers, the speed at which new supply connects becomes a question of who absorbs the cost when it doesn't. The signal balance leans bullish on PJM real-time power, with the pressure coming from load outrunning new connections rather than from any single project.¹ None of that depends on the full 220 GW arriving. It depends on the gap between demand that is already here and supply that is stuck in study. So the reform faces a clean test. The old process converted barely an eighth of its applicants into operating plant, and PJM rebuilt the queue precisely because that record was indefensible.¹ Whether the new cycle clears studies faster, or simply produces a larger backlog processed by better software, will not be clear for months. Watch two things. How much of the 220 GW actually clears study and signs interconnection agreements, and whether the regional grid operators win their FERC extension or are forced to start building.^2,5 On the historical conversion rate, 220 GW of proposals implies under 30 GW of finished plant.^1,5 That is the number that should anchor expectations, not the headline.