Not Intended to Be Recommendations or a Roadmap: Berkeley Lab's Report on Speed to Power for Large Loads

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory published a report in June 2026, "Speed to Power: Solutions for Accelerating Large Load Connections," with support from the Energy Department's Office of Electricity. Its disclaimer says the authors' views and opinions do not necessarily reflect those of the United States Government. Rapid growth in demand from data centers and other large loads, the report says, is creating a range of new challenges, "leading to bottlenecks that have slowed connection" of large loads to the electric grid. Drawing on "an extensive document and literature review," it identifies 41 potential solutions for accelerating large load connections. Its primary audience, it says, is state and federal energy regulators, though it is relevant for a broader audience, including utilities, regional system operators, state policymakers and consumer advocates. Parts of the report follow, not the whole.

Five Functional Areas

The report organizes the 41 solutions into five functional areas: load forecasting, interconnection, utility procurement, markets and operations, and cost allocation and ratemaking. It further organizes them into 13 specific solution areas. Under interconnection it lists, among others, solutions that "create faster, more flexible kinds of interconnection service, and provide options for interconnection customers to reduce connection times by building their own distribution and transmission facilities."

Some of the areas, the report says, are more directly related to large load connection, such as interconnection, and some are more indirect, such as cost allocation and ratemaking. The indirect areas "preemptively tackle issues that can lead to bottlenecks." Large load tariffs, for instance, "can be an important strategy for accelerating large load connections if tariff provisions address concerns over economic risks to ratepayers that might otherwise be litigated or investigated in a regulatory proceeding."

The Near Term and a Longer Runway

The solutions range in difficulty and timing, the report says, from relatively modest changes that could be put in place in the near term, which it gives as one to two years, such as streamlined interconnection and large load tariffs, to structural changes that "would require a longer runway, such as non-firm transmission service for large loads." The most challenging, it says, are those that involve overlapping federal-state jurisdiction, which "may need to await the resolution" of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's proceeding on the interconnection of large loads to the interstate transmission system.

Some of the solutions apply only in certain regions, and others, such as large load tariffs and wholesale rates, "may be mutually exclusive." The report adds that "The solutions are not intended to be recommendations or a roadmap, but illustrative examples of potential opportunities available to decision makers."

For a project with a date to meet, the changes the report names for the near term, such as streamlined interconnection and large load tariffs, are relatively modest ones, and the structural ones would need a longer runway.

Scope and Time

The list "is not exhaustive," the report says, and some solutions are out of its scope. Among them are generator interconnection reforms. In some jurisdictions, it says, "the main bottleneck to large load connections may be the generator interconnection process." Permitting reforms and faster construction timelines are out of scope too. "Often the most time-intensive step in large load interconnection is in the interconnection facilities and network upgrade construction phase," the report says, and "At present, there do not appear to be any efforts to more holistically evaluate strategies to reduce construction times."

Further on, in its section on load interconnection processes, the report says that "In general, the most time-intensive part of the load interconnection process will be interconnection studies." Study timelines, it adds, may vary with the size of the load, the complexity of its configuration and where on the transmission or distribution system it connects.

Who will take up the construction times that the report leaves out of its list?