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PJM's expedited interconnection window, capped at ten large capacity requests per year and sunsetting December 31, 2027, is the second grid-side filter overlaying the OBBBA bucket-two solar and wind pipeline.

FERC's June 9, 2026 order in Docket ER26-1563 accepted PJM's expedited interconnection process for large new or uprated capacity resources. The mechanism approves up to ten interconnection requests per calendar year outside the reformed cluster study cycle and sunsets on December 31, 2027. The eligible pool is dispatchable capacity: gas combined-cycle, gas combustion turbine, coal life extension, nuclear uprate. Solar and wind are not the target. The relevance to the OBBBA bucket-two pipeline is second-order, on the network upgrade cost allocation and study queue capacity that the expedited window pulls off the top before the reformed cluster gets to run.

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2,600+ GW
of clean power projects in US interconnection queues
20%
of US electricity from nuclear, the largest clean baseload source
5×
projected grid storage capacity growth by 2030
$10T+
energy transition investment by 2050 (BloombergNEF)
Today

Latest news

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McGuireWoods (docket summary) interconnectiondata-centers

FERC large-load show cause: abeyance window closes, Aug 17 filing wall next

The 45-day abeyance window under FERC's six show-cause orders (EL26-67 through EL26-72) closed Sunday. Any RTO that did not file for a stay by Aug 3 must submit its full Section 206 answer or Section 205 tariff reforms by Aug 17. The docket is the near-term inflection point for how PJM, MISO, SPP, CAISO, ISO-NE, and NYISO study, price, and interconnect large loads. Data center queue economics, co-location rules, and cost-shift protections all land in the same brief.

Energy Storage News (ESS News) solareurope

Sonnedix closes €730M solar-plus-storage refinance across four southern-European markets

A nine-bank consortium backed Sonnedix's refinancing of ~540 MW of operating PV plus two BESS assets across Italy, Spain, Portugal and France, with proceeds also earmarked for new PV and battery construction. The scale, syndicate breadth, and battery-inclusion signal that European solar-plus-storage project finance has fully recovered from the 2023-24 crunch, with lithium-backed BESS now bundled as standard collateral rather than optional add-on.

The Motley Fool (reporting on DOE announcement) smrai-demand

DOE names Nvidia, AWS, and six reactor firms to $60M Project Prometheus

The Department of Energy's Genesis Mission awarded a three-year, $60M Phase II grant to Project Prometheus, an AI-for-reactor-design program led by Idaho National Laboratory with Nvidia and Amazon Web Services. X-energy, Oklo, TerraPower, Westinghouse, Aalo Atomics, and Standard Nuclear are named participants. NuScale was not selected.

Terra-Gen (press release, via PR Newswire) solarstorage

Terra-Gen closes out 365-MW Lockhart complex with 80-MW final phase in San Bernardino County

Terra-Gen brought the 80-MW Lockhart Solar PV IV online in mid-July, completing a 365-MW solar plus 173.7-MW battery buildout at the Kramer Junction interconnect. All four phases now sell under long-term PPAs to California load-serving entities. Cupertino Electric was the EPC. The complex is jointly owned by Masdar and Igneo Infrastructure Partners.

GlobeNewswire (Heelstone / Qualitas Energy release) ai-demanddata-centers

Heelstone reaches financial close on 86 MW of Illinois solar, Meta takes the offtake

Heelstone Renewable Energy hit financial close July 20 on three Illinois PV projects totaling 86 MW, with Meta taking a long-term corporate PPA for the full environmental attribute output. ING Capital led the debt, Stonehenge Capital took the tax equity, and Knobelsdorff is EPC. COD is end of 2026. Small in isolation, but another datapoint in the hyperscaler-anchored solar pipeline that now dominates marginal US capex.

Energy-Storage.News, July 21, 2026 us-supplypermitting

Spearmint clears Minnesota permit for second 600 MWh MISO project

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission granted Spearmint Energy a site permit for the 150 MW / 600 MWh Midwater project in Freeborn County, the developer's second Minnesota standalone storage approval. Installed capex is roughly $457 million, using Tesla Megapack 2XL LFP modules, with construction targeted for Q1 2027 and commercial operation by year-end 2027.

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High-voltage transmission substation and interconnection equipment, standing in for the PJM expedited interconnection process approved by FERC in June 2026 for up to ten large new or uprated capacity resource requests per calendar year through the December 31, 2027 sunset.
pjmferc

PJM's expedited interconnection window, capped at ten large capacity requests per year and sunsetting December 31, 2027, is the second grid-side filter overlaying the OBBBA bucket-two solar and wind pipeline.

FERC's June 9, 2026 order in Docket ER26-1563 accepted PJM's expedited interconnection process for large new or uprated capacity resources. The mechanism approves up to ten interconnection requests per calendar year outside the reformed cluster study cycle and sunsets on December 31, 2027. The eligible pool is dispatchable capacity: gas combined-cycle, gas combustion turbine, coal life extension, nuclear uprate. Solar and wind are not the target. The relevance to the OBBBA bucket-two pipeline is second-order, on the network upgrade cost allocation and study queue capacity that the expedited window pulls off the top before the reformed cluster gets to run.
A construction crane working at a large utility-scale solar panel farm, standing in for the physical-work-of-significant-nature activity Notice 2025-42 now requires as the sole route to begin-of-construction status for solar facilities above 1.5 MWac and for all wind facilities under Sections 45Y and 48E after the July 4, 2026 OBBBA deadline.
obbbanotice-2025-42

One month past the July 4 OBBBA deadline: how Notice 2025-42 sorts wind and solar projects into three placed-in-service buckets, and where the physical work test now binds

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act's July 4, 2026 begin-of-construction deadline for the Section 45Y production tax credit and Section 48E investment tax credit is one month behind the tape. Treasury Notice 2025-42, issued August 15, 2025 and effective September 2, 2025, is the operating document that decides which projects still qualify and on what placed-in-service clock. The Notice eliminated the 5 percent cost safe harbor for all wind facilities and for solar facilities above 1.5 MWac, leaving the physical work test as the only route to a pre-July 4 begin-of-construction date for the utility-scale pipeline. This piece reads the three placed-in-service buckets that the OBBBA plus Notice 2025-42 stack creates, what the physical work test actually requires as a matter of Treasury guidance, and the specific evidentiary gap the market is now trading around.
Utility-scale solar array under construction (file photo standing in for the labor stack that determines whether a project earns the 5x prevailing wage and apprenticeship multiplier on its base tax credit).
prevailing-wageapprenticeship

Prevailing wage and apprenticeship compliance is the multiplier that turns a 6 percent base ITC into a 30 percent bonus ITC, and the recordkeeping shape is where projects actually miss the qualification

The Inflation Reduction Act's five-times multiplier on the base Section 48/48E investment tax credit and the base Section 45/45Y production tax credit is the single largest lever in every renewable project's capital stack. A qualifying project earns a 30 percent ITC instead of a 6 percent ITC, or a 2.75 cents per kWh PTC instead of a 0.55 cents per kWh PTC (in 2024 dollars, adjusted annually). Missing the multiplier means the project's tax equity dies. Projects rarely fail because they underpaid a worker. They fail because they cannot produce the certified payroll, apprentice ratio logs, and good-faith-effort documentation the Treasury final regulations require. The recordkeeping bar is where the money is.

Frequently asked

Why not just read general energy news?

Because generalist coverage buries the supply-chain and policy texture. A permitting decision on a transmission project, a DOE loan commitment to a lithium refinery, an NRC licensing milestone for an SMR, a FERC rulemaking on interconnection reform: these move capital in ways that earnings coverage misses. Clean Power Press is built for the people who track those signals.

Is this for traders or long-horizon investors?

Long-horizon. The thesis is a multi-decade buildout. The daily briefs work for tactical positioning, but the analytical frame is structural: supply-chain, policy, project-pipeline. If you're trading micro-moves on spot prices, this isn't your tool.

What verticals do you cover and how do they connect?

Energy storage and lithium, solar, nuclear and SMRs, grid and transmission, and critical minerals. Climate policy is the connective tissue. The verticals are separate editorial frames but they share a common insight: the bottleneck on every one of them is permitting, supply-chain concentration, and policy implementation, not the underlying technology.

What's your stance on climate change?

Climate change is established science. We don't give false balance to fossil-fuel-industry framing on the science. Our editorial stance is climate-forward: the clean energy transition is necessary, urgent, and one of the most consequential investment stories of the next several decades. That's not advocacy. We report facts, cover setbacks as well as progress, and don't oversell the pace of transition.

What's your analytical frame across verticals?

Track marginal, watch policy, ignore most price noise. The marginal capex dollar, the marginal project entering permitting, the marginal regulatory decision: these are where the structural story moves. Average inventory levels, spot price tapes, and quarterly headlines follow later and with lower signal value.

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