InfrastructureDOE Releases National Transmission Interconnection Roadmap
DOE’s National Transmission and Interconnection Roadmap outlines 35 actions for planning, queue reform, financing, and workforce programs that utilities must integrate into compliance roadmaps immediately.
Verified for technical accuracy — Kodi C.
On 17 January 2024, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Deployment Office released the National Transmission and Interconnection (NTI) Roadmap, a full blueprint of 35 near-term actions that federal agencies, states, utilities, regional transmission teams (RTOs), and developers must take to relieve interconnection backlogs and deliver the 47–90 gigawatts of new transmission capacity the nation will need by 2035.
The roadmap translates findings from DOE’s National Transmission Needs Study and the Interconnection Innovation e-Xchange (i2X) into a phased setup agenda that stretches across governance reforms, data transparency, permitting, financing, and workforce development. Compliance teams across the electric sector must now assess how the roadmap’s commitments intersect with regulatory obligations—from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) orders and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) funding requirements to state siting statutes and integrated resource planning rules.
Mapping the roadmap’s action areas to organizational responsibilities
The roadmap organizes DOE’s 35 actions into four pillars: (1) modernising regional and interregional planning, (2) accelerating interconnection queue processing, (3) enableing transmission financing and customer cost protections, and (4) strengthening the workforce, supply chain, and community benefits that underpin rapid build-out. Utilities and transmission developers should map each action to internal owners.
For example, planning departments must prepare to engage with DOE’s forthcoming long-duration transmission planning guidance, which will standardize benefit-cost analyzes and require greater emphasis on multi-value projects. Regulatory affairs teams should monitor DOE’s planned collaboration with FERC on interregional planning principles and cost allocation, ensuring that testimony, filings, and stakeholder comments remain aligned.
Queue reform responsibilities are similarly distributed. The roadmap calls for utilities, RTOs, and state commissions to adopt portfolio-based cluster studies, improved data exchange with developers, and shared queuing metrics. Compliance offices should inventory current queue procedures against DOE’s recommended maturity model, identify gaps, and develop change management plans that address governance, staffing, and IT system improvements. Stakeholder engagement personnel must prepare to participate in DOE’s planned convenings with regulators and consumer advocates focused on transparency and queue performance reporting.
Interconnection data, modeling, and transparency commitments
DOE’s roadmap emphasizes standardized data access as a prerequisite for queue acceleration. The agency committed to build a national transmission data clearinghouse, publish model documentation templates, and create secure data-sharing agreements that let developers and independent engineers access power flow models without exposing critical infrastructure information.
Utilities should catalog their current datasets—topology files, contingency lists, historical congestion data, and generator interconnection study inputs—and assess whether they can be transformed into the formats DOE will request. Information security teams must draft data-sharing agreements and classification schemes that balance transparency with North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) requirements.
Modelling departments should prepare to incorporate probabilistic methods and inverter-based resource (IBR) modeling improvements that DOE will pilot through national laboratories. This will require validation workflows, updated quality assurance checklists, and training for planning engineers on new software tools. The roadmap also references forthcoming DOE technical assistance for states seeking to harmonize integrated resource plans with transmission planning; state-regulated utilities should coordinate early with commissions to align assumptions, timelines, and public engagement requirements.
Permitting, siting, and community engagement expectations
The roadmap commits DOE to expanding the Rapid Response Team for Transmission, executing programmatic agreements with federal land-management agencies, and publishing model community benefits frameworks. Transmission owners must ensure their permitting strategies use these tools. Environmental compliance teams should review the roadmap’s emphasis on cumulative impact analysis, tribal consultation, and community benefit agreements (CBAs). Project developers need to document how they will integrate DOE’s community benefits principles—including high-quality jobs, environmental justice outcomes, and transparency—into National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) filings and state siting applications.
The roadmap highlights opportunities to braid federal permitting reforms with state “one-stop-shop” processes. State-authorized utilities should coordinate with governors’ offices and infrastructure authorities to align schedules, share environmental studies, and adopt digital permitting portals. Legal teams must also track DOE’s plan to issue guidance on using the Inflation Reduction Act’s Section 50152 transmission facility financing and the Department of Transportation’s rights-of-way authorities, ensuring that project agreements incorporate federal compliance clauses, Davis-Bacon wage requirements, and Buy America preferences.
Financing, cost allocation, and customer protections
DOE’s roadmap outlines expanded use of its Transmission Facilitation Program (TFP), Loan Programs Office (LPO) authorities, and new transmission tax credit monetization pathways. Finance departments should evaluate whether planned projects qualify for DOE capacity contracts, convertible transmission investment mechanisms, or loan guarantees.
Each option carries compliance obligations: TFP contracts require open access commitments and quarterly progress reporting, while LPO loans demand detailed project management plans, climate resilience assessments, and community benefit reporting. Utilities must coordinate with rate case teams to show how federal support will reduce customer rate impacts and to prepare supporting testimony for state commission approval.
Cost allocation remains a major focus. DOE intends to help multi-state negotiations and offer analytical support to quantify cross-border benefits. Regulatory strategy teams should identify potential participants, develop playbooks for negotiating participant funding agreements, and maintain documentation that links benefit metrics (such as avoided generation costs, reliability improvements, and emissions reductions) to rate design proposals. Consumer advocacy and stakeholder engagement plans must include transparent explanations of how cost allocation affects different customer classes, consistent with DOE’s call for preventive customer communication.
Workforce, supply chain, and reliability obligations
The roadmap recognizes workforce and supply chain constraints as critical barriers. It announces partnerships with the Departments of Labor and Commerce to develop transmission workforce projections, expand apprenticeship programs, and promote domestic manufacturing of conductors, transformers, and grid-enhancing technologies.
Utilities should update workforce plans to include apprenticeship utilization targets, competency frameworks for advanced grid technologies, and supplier diversity metrics. Procurement teams must align sourcing strategies with domestic content incentives under the IRA and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), documenting compliance with Build America, Buy America (BABA) waivers and tracking supplier resilience risks.
Reliability remains non-negotiable. The roadmap links transmission expansion to NERC reliability standards and anticipates increased monitoring of inverter-based resource performance. Transmission owners should coordinate with reliability coordinators to incorporate roadmap actions—such as dynamic line rating deployments and topology optimization tools—into reliability planning assessments. Compliance teams must update evidence packages for NERC audits, showing how new technologies and operational practices meet standards like FAC-003 (vegetation management) and TOP-003 (operational planning data).
Implementation roadmaps and governance
Given the roadmap’s breadth, teams should establish internal NTI setup offices. These offices can maintain risk registers, track DOE milestones, coordinate cross-functional workstreams, and prepare quarterly reports for executive leadership. Key milestones include DOE’s planned release of detailed setup playbooks, funding opportunity announcements for transmission financing tools, and interconnection queue performance dashboards. Teams should also build feedback mechanisms to inform DOE about practical challenges encountered during setup, influencing future guidance.
Boards should receive periodic updates summarizing roadmap progress, regulatory developments, and stakeholder sentiment. Audit committees must evaluate whether control environments around project selection, federal funding compliance, and data governance remain effective. Internal audit should schedule readiness assessments focusing on interconnection queue process changes, data-sharing controls, and community benefits reporting.
By operationalizing the NTI Roadmap through disciplined governance, utilities and developers can reduce interconnection delays, access federal financing, and strengthen community trust. Early action will also position teams to show compliance when DOE and FERC assess progress toward national transmission goals in the coming years.
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Cited sources
- DOE Grid Deployment Office — National Transmission Interconnection Roadmap (January 17, 2024) — www.energy.gov
- DOE — National Transmission Interconnection Roadmap (Full Report) — www.energy.gov
- ISO/IEC 27017:2015 — Cloud Service Security Controls — International Organization for Standardization
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