In September 2023, Pearl Street launched its new software product, Interconnect™, to help stakeholders assess the interconnection risk of actively queued projects by providing automated system impact studies under any set of user-defined assumptions. The company remains committed to addressing the interconnection backlog and today unveils its most requested feature for Interconnect™. In addition to evaluating network upgrade cost risk for queued projects, users can now leverage the software to pre-screen potential points of interconnection (POIs) to facilitate project siting efforts. 

“To address interconnection backlogs, we developed Interconnect™ to provide on-demand risk assessment for currently queued projects. To prevent interconnection backlogs, we expanded Interconnect™’s risk assessment capabilities to compute on-demand injection capacity maps at potential POIs given changing queue assumptions,” says Co-Founder and CEO David Bromberg. “This helps our customers select high-quality sites and be better prepared for variability throughout the study process.”

Other companies have built prospecting software to help developers find project locations with favorable interconnection characteristics. However, there are two main drawbacks to typical injection capacity maps. First, capacity values become stale if not frequently re-run based on the latest queue information. Second, capacity values are uniform for all users, preventing developers from injecting their insights, intuition, and experience into the analysis.

To optimize Interconnect™’s new prospecting function, Pearl Street garnered feedback from developers about desired features and usability. This exercise revealed a resounding need for on-demand injection capacity analysis based on user-defined assumptions. As a result, Pearl Street enhanced Interconnect™ to meet the needs of its customer base. 

By allowing users to customize their study assumptions, such as excluding from the analysis actively queued projects they believe are unlikely to move forward, Interconnect™ delivers on-demand injection capacity maps unique to each user. Previously described in a Renewable Energy World blog post as a “set-it-and-forget it system,” Interconnect™ users do not have to worry about stale or uniform data. Instead, they can update their maps at any time because the entire analysis is automated, meaning they can refresh injection capacity values as queues change.

Interconnect™’s new prospecting function is a welcome addition to a developer’s toolkit and can help answer questions including: 

• What are the constraints and injection capacity at a given POI?
• Are there existing projects I should monitor that greatly impact my desired POI’s injection capacity?
• What happens to a POI’s injection capacity as nearby projects submit applications or withdraw from the queue?
• What are the different capacities for energy and capacity projects?
• How much should I expect to spend on network upgrades?

Ultimately, Interconnect™ is a scenario analysis tool to optimize project decisions at any point in the interconnection lifecycle. Notable project developers are currently using the product to support decisions for prospecting and actively queued projects and Pearl Street will continue to expand Interconnect™'s functionality throughout 2024.