Is Grid Defection with Microgrids Likely to Become a Trend?

By Elisa Wood, Microgrid Knowledge

Most microgrids in the continental US are connected to the grid. Those that aren’t tend to be on mountaintops, islands or other areas too remote from the grid to make connecting cost-effective or even possible.

But I’ve begun to notice incidents where this is not true – where microgrid owners are shunning a grid connection for other reasons. Their withdrawal stems from gnarly problems, not easily or quickly solved, which makes me wonder: g

Here are some of the main reasons microgrid customers cite for foregoing a grid connection, even when it's available to them.

Long wait to connect

Power plant developers — from those building large projects to microgrids — complain that it takes too long to interconnect to the grid. Some don’t want to wait for interconnection approvals, so they build their microgrid and begin operating it off grid with the intent of eventually connecting. Others choose to stay off the grid permanently.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory documented the severity of interconnection delays in a new report, which found that not only are the queues long, but they are getting longer. Interconnection wait times rose from about two years for projects built in 2000-2007 to nearly four years for those built in 2018-2022. The situation was even worse in 2022; the projects built that year had waited a median of five years to connect.

Now there is more power waiting to connect (~2,040 GW) than there is total installed capacity on the grid (~1,250 GW), according to the report. This may, in part, be because developers apply for interconnection early, before they have all of their ducks in a row to build the project, knowing that the interconnection wait can be long. If other aspects of the project fall through, they withdraw from the queue. Only 21% of projects in the queue eventually get built, according to historical data.

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