A Senate Bill Aims to Unclog the Line Between New Power Plants and the Grid

A newly introduced bill would let power projects opt into faster grid connection, borrowing from a Texas model that added the most new capacity in the country.

Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the ranking Democrat on the Senate natural resources committee, introduced a bill Thursday to speed how new power plants connect to the electricity grid. It applies to all generation types and would let developers opt into a faster safety study instead of the current drawn-out technical reviews and equipment upgrade fees. The bill names this option 'basic access service for energy-only delivery,' or BASED, modeled on the 'connect and manage' approach Texas uses.

The bottleneck it targets is real and expensive. Under the current process, a new plant must pay for grid and transmission upgrades to run at full capacity during peak stress — a North Dakota plant reportedly had to fund line upgrades over 1,000 miles away in Missouri, and one Maryland solar-and-battery project saw its connection cost balloon from $1.25 million to nearly $72 million before being shelved. Connecting a plant now takes about eight years, versus under four in Texas.

If enacted, faster interconnection would let cheap generation reach customers sooner. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab counted over 2,000 gigawatts of proposed projects stuck in queues at the end of 2025 — more than the roughly 1,400 gigawatts of operating capacity. Clearing even a fraction would add supply and, in principle, ease prices.

Watch for the bipartisan permitting package expected later this year, possibly next month. The caveats are heavy: the bill has just been introduced and has not passed, most queued projects are hypothetical and will never be built, and the case for the Texas model comes from Heinrich and an RMI researcher who favors it.

Source: Heatmap