The dramatic increase in generation development, together with the new capacity markets and the surge in demand for renewable generation, has put enormous pressure on transmission providers to efficiently interconnect these critically needed resources and, in particular, to reform how they manage their interconnection queues and the steadily growing logjam in processing interconnection requests. There are two reasons for queue backlogs. First, in most regions, projects are studied one-by-one instead of simultaneously. Delays caused by having to "wait your turn" are exacerbated when projects drop out of the queue, thereby requiring the transmission provider to start the study process all over again. Second, many developers submit multiple applications for early-stage projects, instead of waiting until they're further advanced. This increases both the queue's size and the likelihood that projects will withdraw upon the completion of their studies, which leads only to even more iterative studies. Each of these problems can be traced in large part to FERC's pricing policies, pursuant to which the entire cost of a transmission upgrade is allocated to the first project triggering the upgrade.
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