Table of Contents 1. Baseline Conditions Have Changed 2. What Queue Position Costs 3. Where the Engineering Decisions Actually Are 4. How Developers Are Adapting — and What's Still Broken 5. What Belongs in Your Engineering Scope From Day One 1. Baseline Conditions Have Changed There is a line most developers have heard on some project call: "We’re just waiting on the interconnection study." A decade ago, this was a procedural hurdle. In 2026, it has become an existential

ERCOT runs a connect-and-manage interconnection model. Unlike PJM or MISO, projects don't wait for network upgrades to be assigned and built before they can interconnect. That's why developers consistently prefer it. The process is faster - in principle. In practice, the median timeline for a BESS project from queue entry to operation is now 4.1 years. Three years ago it was 3.5. The queue has grown. The process hasn't scaled with it. The more important shift is where the del

The Los Angeles EVCS market has a specific permitting environment, one that catches small and mid-sized installers, electrical contractors, and EPCs off guard more often than it should. Two separate permitting authorities. A utility rebate program with a sequencing requirement that most firms miss. A jurisdiction boundary that doesn't show up on any standard site address. The firms that move quickly and cleanly through the LA market know all of this before the first drawing i