FERC has approved SPP’s waiver request to delay processing its 2024 generator interconnection study cluster as the RTO works to clear a backlog of GI requests that date back to 2018. 

The commission said Oct. 30 that the waiver request met its four criteria for approval in that SPP acted in good faith, the request is limited in scope, it remedies a concrete problem, and granting the waiver will not have undesirable effects, such as harm to third parties (ER24-2860). 

The waiver allows SPP to defer starting the definitive interconnection system impact study (DISIS) for the 2024 cluster until completing the first planned restudy of the DISIS-2023-001 cluster; extending the close of the 2024 DISIS queue cluster window from Oct. 31 to March 1, 2025; and opening the 2025 DISIS window until April 1, 2026, or the completion of the second decision point for the 2024 DISIS cluster. 

The grid operator told FERC that waiving the tariff provisions will enable it to focus its “limited resources” on processing the unprecedented number of interconnection requests already in the queue. It also said the waiver won’t delay executing GI agreements for pending or future clusters and will prevent lower-queued and future interconnection customers from expending time and resources considering study- and interconnection-cost-related information that could become moot due to restudies of higher-queued clusters. 

SPP began tackling the backlog in 2022 with the 2018 cluster. The queue contained 1,139 active requests for 221 GW of capacity at the time; it now has 395 active requests for 82 GW of capacity. The RTO has executed 48 new GIAs for 7.75 GW of capacity during the backlog work. (See “SPP Modifies GI Backlog Process,” SPP Markets & Operations Policy Committee Briefs: Oct. 15-16, 2024.)