According to Utility Dive, Southwest Power Pool has proposed merging its transmission planning and interconnection processes into a single Comprehensive Planning Process as demand surges across its 14-state footprint. Peak demand jumped nearly 11% over the past four years, with SPP warning these trends will “most likely accelerate.” The grid operator currently has over 130 GW stuck in its interconnection queue, largely due to uncertainty about upgrade costs and speculative projects causing delays. Remarkably, this landmark proposal faced no opposition in SPP’s stakeholder process—something nearly unprecedented for such a fundamental change. The new framework would use a GRID-C rate system where interconnection customers pay their share of regional upgrades, while SPP separately asked FERC to approve subregional cost allocation for 100-300 kV projects.
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Why this matters for the clean energy transition
Look, we’ve got a massive bottleneck problem in this country. 130 gigawatts of potential generation just sitting in queue? That’s like having hundreds of power plants ready to go but nobody can flip the switch because the wires aren’t there. Here’s the thing: developers hate uncertainty more than they hate costs. When you don’t know whether you’ll be on the hook for $5 million or $50 million in network upgrades, you either don’t bother or you submit speculative applications that clog the system for everyone.
SPP’s approach basically says “let’s plan the transmission we know we’ll need anyway, and figure out fair cost sharing upfront.” The GRID-C framework creates predictability—a per-megawatt charge that tells developers exactly what they’re signing up for. And spreading costs more broadly means no single project gets crushed by upgrade expenses that should really be regional responsibilities.
Who wins and who might push back
Renewable developers should be doing cartwheels over this. More certainty means better financing terms, faster deployment, and less wasted time on projects that never materialize. Load-serving utilities get more reliable planning and potentially lower costs through better coordination. But let’s be real—someone’s always unhappy when you change cost allocation.
The separate FERC filing about subregional cost allocation for 100-300 kV projects is where things get politically tricky. When 67% of costs stay within subregions instead of spreading wider, some areas will definitely feel the pinch more. But honestly? That’s probably fair—if a transmission upgrade mostly benefits your neighborhood, you should pay most of the bill.
The real test is what happens next
So will this actually work? The fact that it cleared SPP’s diverse stakeholder process without opposition is huge. These regional planning bodies are famous for gridlock—everyone protecting their own turf. When you get utilities, generators, consumer advocates, and regulators all nodding along, you’ve probably found a solution that actually makes sense.
But here’s my question: can this model scale to other regions? SPP’s footprint from Texas to North Dakota includes some of the fastest-growing renewable zones in the country. If they can make this work, it could become the template for fixing interconnection nightmares everywhere. The FERC approval process will be the real tell—if commissioners greenlight this, we might finally be getting serious about building the grid we actually need.
