The United States has reached the point where generator interconnection is no longer a narrow administrative function. It is a national infrastructure bottleneck. Across the country, renewable, storage, gas, hybrid, and load-serving projects are waiting years for studies, restudies, cost estimates, and interconnection agreements. The result is uncertainty for developers, delayed investment, higher costs for consumers, and greater difficulty maintaining reliability as the resource mix changes. FERC Order 2023 was an important step toward reform, but the next question is operational: who is responsible for making sure the interconnection process actually works at scale?

One possible answer is the creation of a centralized interconnection hub: a federally accountable company, agency, nonprofit, or public-private institution that would coordinate with FERC, ISOs, RTOs, transmission owners, utilities, and developers to standardize and accelerate the queue process. This entity would not replace the regional expertise of ISOs and transmission owners. Instead, it would act as the national operating platform for interconnection: a common intake system, data clearinghouse, study workflow manager, contractor coordinator, transparency tool, and accountability layer.

The need for this kind of reform is no longer theoretical. In May 2026, American Electric Power publicly expressed frustration with the speed of interconnection in PJM and SPP. CEO Bill Fehrman said AEP was reviewing its options, including its participation in those markets, because the company needs a faster way to connect generation to serve rapidly growing load. But the more important point was not whether AEP is actually likely to leave PJM or SPP in the near term. It probably is not. Fehrman described the review as early-stage and said AEP had not made a decision to exit PJM. The real message was that one of the country’s largest transmission owners is worried that, without structural reform, the industry could still be having the same queue conversation a decade from now. (TD World)

That is exactly the problem a central interconnection hub would address. Today, developers and utilities face different forms, timelines, data standards, modeling requirements, and communication processes across regions. A national platform could require consistent project data, site-control documentation, equipment information, model submissions, and milestone tracking. Incomplete or low-quality applications could be flagged quickly, before they consume scarce engineering resources. This would not eliminate the need for transmission upgrades, but it could reduce rework and improve the quality of projects entering study cycles.

The hub could also coordinate technical study workflows. ISOs, RTOs, and transmission owners would still provide system models, local assumptions, facility ratings, protection requirements, and regional planning judgment. Qualified contractors could perform portions of the power-flow, short-circuit, stability, deliverability, and facilities-study work. But the central entity would manage deadlines, assign work, track dependencies, maintain the official record, and escalate delays. In this model, engineering remains regional, but process accountability becomes national.

Transparency would be one of the greatest benefits. A centralized hub could publish standardized metrics: average study duration, deficiency rates, restudy frequency, withdrawal rates, affected-system delays, upgrade-cost ranges, and interconnection-agreement timelines. FERC, states, developers, consumers, and grid planners would finally be able to compare performance across regions and identify where the process is failing.

This proposal would require careful governance. The central hub would need strict conflict-of-interest rules, cybersecurity protections, confidentiality safeguards, CEII controls, audit trails, and stakeholder oversight. It should not become a black box or a new gatekeeper. ISOs and transmission owners must retain appropriate authority over reliability and local system planning. Developers must receive fair, non-discriminatory treatment. FERC should regulate the framework, but the institution could be structured as a government corporation, nonprofit consortium, cooperative utility, or certified public-private operator.

The goal is not federal micromanagement of every substation. The goal is centralized accountability for a process that has become nationally important. Interconnection delays affect reliability, affordability, industrial development, resource adequacy, and decarbonization. A fragmented queue system may no longer be adequate for the scale of investment now seeking access to the grid. FERC and the industry should study whether a centralized interconnection hub could provide the shared infrastructure needed to make queue reform real.