FERC on June 9 approved PJM’s Expedited Interconnection Track, a two-year carveout that lets up to ten generation projects per year of at least 250 MW bypass the standard queue if they can reach commercial operation within three years and carry written backing from a state’s primary siting authority.
PJM expects each accepted project to move from filing to a generator interconnection agreement in roughly ten months. The program is set to expire at the end of 2027 unless extended.
The order is fuel-source neutral. Any resource type can apply, but the three-year online requirement and the 250 MW floor narrow the field in practice. Combined-cycle gas and uprated nuclear sit in the eligibility sweet spot. New build small modular reactors, most utility-scale solar paired with storage, and offshore wind are unlikely to clear the three-year clock.
Opposition was broad. Vistra, the Illinois Commerce Commission, LS Power, the New Jersey Bureau of Public Utilities, clean energy trade groups, and community organizations filed against the proposal. Vistra argued the structure discriminates against generators stuck in the regular cycle. FERC dismissed that claim and characterized concerns about queue delays for non-EIT projects as speculative.
Commissioner David Rosner noted in concurrence that the state-siting backstop pushes coordination back onto public utility commissions and state legislatures, since governors and siting authorities now decide which projects get the federal fast lane.
The EIT lands two weeks before FERC’s promised end-of-June action on the large-load interconnection docket (RM26-4-000), which governs how data centers and other 20 MW-plus loads connect to the same system. The supply side moves first; the demand side rule follows. Watch which states file their first EIT endorsements, what generation type those endorsements favor, and whether the queue inside PJM Cycle 2 begins to widen in response.
For the US supply chain, the takeaway is narrow but real. A federally blessed fast lane for incumbent thermal plus a small slice of late-stage storage and renewable projects, dispensed by state siting authorities, is now the operative path for any new gigawatt that needs to plug into PJM before the end of the decade.