Developers report their pipelines in gigawatts, and the numbers are large. Buyers, lenders and investors increasingly discount them. The reason is base rates: most capacity that enters a pipeline never gets built, and the share that does depends on a handful of milestones that a headline megawatt figure does not show.
Part 2 of this series showed buyers paying full prices for operating and contracted assets and very little for development optionality. This part explains why, sets out the markers that separate a high-quality pipeline from a large one, and shows how quickly a headline number shrinks once it is weighted by stage.
The base rates are poor
Berkeley Lab’s Queued Up 2026 is the most complete record of what happens to U.S. projects after they request a grid connection. Of the capacity that requested interconnection between 2000 and 2020, only about 13% had reached commercial operation by the end of 2025, and about three-quarters had withdrawn. Even a signed interconnection agreement is no guarantee: of the capacity that signed one between 2000 and 2022, 43% was operating, 41% had withdrawn and 15% was still active.
What happens to queued U.S. capacity
Status at end-2025, share of capacity
Today’s queue is no more mature. Only 26% of the 2,061 GW of active U.S. requests, about 536 GW, had a draft or executed interconnection agreement at the end of 2025. And the wait has lengthened: the median project built in 2025 took 61 months from interconnection request to commercial operation, against under two years for projects built in 2004–08.
Completion rates differ by market
Share of 2000–2020 interconnection requests that reached commercial operation
European queues are, if anything, more speculative, as Part 1 showed. Italy’s grid operator held 268 GW of standalone storage requests in March 2026. German transmission operators held 211 GW of battery requests against 41 GW of storage needed by 2037. Poland’s queue exceeds 240 GW against 33 GW in operation. In the UK, connections reform took a 722 GW queue and gave priority status to 283 GW. In Europe, a firm grid connection is the single most important filter on pipeline value.
Six markers of a high-quality pipeline
| Marker | What good looks like | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Grid connection | Signed interconnection agreement or firm connection offer, with a known energisation date and upgrade costs | Queue position only; non-firm access; network upgrade costs not yet allocated |
| Site & permits | Land under lease or ownership; permits in hand, or a route that avoids federal review | Land options only; a federal nexus that routes the project through Interior review |
| Offtake | PPA, toll or capacity contract with a creditworthy counterparty | Merchant exposure in saturating markets, such as ERCOT ancillary services or German aFRR |
| Tax & trade (U.S.) | Documented begin-construction position and continuity plan; supply chain that meets FEOC thresholds | Solar with no begin-construction position after July 4, 2026; storage with unverified FEOC exposure |
| Financing | Construction debt and tax equity or credit transfer committed | No lender engagement; reliance on merchant revenue to size debt |
| Conversion record | Disclosed history of pipeline converting to COD and sale prices achieved | Late-stage book shrinking while total megawatts grow; repeated impairments of early-stage projects |
Weighting the pipeline by stage
The simplest test of a pipeline is to weight each stage by its chance of reaching operation. The example below applies Berkeley Lab’s base rates to a hypothetical 10 GW pipeline with the stage mix typical of large developers today, in which most capacity is early stage.
A 10 GW pipeline, weighted by stage
Illustrative, GW
On those assumptions, a 10 GW pipeline is worth about 2.9 GW of expected capacity, and almost half of that comes from the 15% of the pipeline that is already late stage. Two pipelines with the same headline can differ several-fold in expected capacity, and more in value, because late-stage megawatts also carry less remaining development spend.
What a weakening pipeline looks like
The markers above are visible in public disclosures. One large listed developer’s reports over the 18 months to mid-2026 show the pattern a buyer should look for:
| Indicator | What the disclosures show |
|---|---|
| Late-stage book | Solar under construction and in backlog fell about 36%; storage fell about 49% |
| Early-stage book | Early-stage storage rose about 23%; early stage is now over 70% of solar and over 80% of storage megawatts |
| Grid rights | Secured interconnection covers under a third of the solar pipeline and about a sixth of the storage pipeline; secured solar interconnection has roughly halved since 2023 |
| Write-downs | Impairments of early-stage projects, which management linked partly to sharply higher interconnection costs, and exits from early-stage development in several markets |
| Sales | Project sales delayed by permitting; per-project sale prices not disclosed |
None of this means the pipeline has no value. It means the headline total overstates it, and that the trend matters as much as the level: a pipeline whose late-stage share is falling is being consumed faster than it is being replenished with quality projects.
What the market pays for quality
Transaction prices show the gap between de-risked and speculative megawatts. In July 2026, EDP Renováveis sold 80% of a 384 MW California solar and storage portfolio, contracted under a 20-year PPA and a 20-year toll, at an enterprise value of about $0.8 billion for 100%, roughly $2.1m per MW, and a projected gain of about 40% over invested capital. At the other end, the average Spanish ready-to-build solar project traded at about €38,000 per MWp in early 2026.
Platforms can still command premiums when the pipeline has a differentiated route to market. Alphabet paid $4.75 billion for Intersect’s development platform, which co-locates generation with data-centre load, while leaving its existing operating assets with their prior owners. What it bought was a pipeline with a buyer for the power already in mind.
How to diligence a pipeline
Questions to ask
- How much capacity holds a signed interconnection agreement or firm connection offer, and on what dates?
- What share of late-stage capacity is contracted, and with whom?
- How has the late-stage book moved over the last six quarters, net of sales?
- Which projects carry a federal nexus or unresolved FEOC exposure?
Data to request
- Project-by-project stage, interconnection status and upgrade cost estimates.
- Historical conversion from each stage to COD or sale, by market.
- Remaining development spend to reach notice to proceed, by project.
- Prior sale prices and the counterparties that paid them.
Bottom line. A high-quality pipeline is one in which a meaningful share of capacity has a grid connection, permits, an offtaker, a tax and trade position and financing. Weighted by stage, most headline pipelines are worth a fraction of their gigawatts. Part 4 asks what happens when a developer keeps those projects instead of selling them.
Data as of October 15, 2026. The weighted-pipeline example is illustrative, and the developer case is drawn from public company filings and presented without naming the company. This piece is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
Sources
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up 2026 release, July 1, 2026. Link
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up 2026 slide deck (interconnection agreement outcomes, completion rates by region, time to COD). Link
- pv magazine on Terna’s queue, Apr 16, 2026. Link
- Modo Energy on German battery grid access, Apr 9, 2026. Link
- Modo Energy on Poland’s grid queue, Apr 4, 2026. Link
- Knight Frank on UK connections reform, Dec 11, 2025. Link
- Public company filings (SEC Form 6-K quarterly results, December 2024 to June 2026, and earnings calls) for the developer case.
- EDPR market notification on its 384 MW California solar and storage rotation, July 27, 2026. Link
- ION Analytics/Infralogic on Spanish project prices, June 4, 2026. Link
- Cleary Gottlieb on Alphabet’s acquisition of Intersect, Mar 2026; TechCrunch, Dec 22, 2025. Link · Link