While PJM points to 40 gigawatts of power that’s approved but awaiting construction, there were 290 gigawatts of power waiting to connect to the PJM grid at the end of 2023, up from 88 gigawatts in 2018, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, a federally funded research center.

A tidal wave

In Lee County, wind turbines sprout from cornfields, some as tall as skyscrapers.

There was heated debate when the state’s first utility-scale wind farm was built here in 2003, Henkel said as she drove her SUV down quiet country roads.

But as time went on, farms continued to produce, the turbines did their jobs and concerns faded.

The county now has 280 wind turbines, with enough power to meet the electricity needs of roughly 200,000 homes.

“It works for this area,” said Henkel. “We are contributing to green energy and energy independence, so I’m proud of that.”

Proposals for big solar projects started arriving here about five years ago, part of a national trend.

A tidal wave of renewable energy projects — driven by falling wind and solar costs and state and federal policies — was building, and heading toward the grid.

“It’s happened really fast,” said Joe Rand, an energy policy researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and lead author of Queued Up, a series of reports on the grid-connection waitlist. “We’re in a rapid and fundamental energy transition in this country.”

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