What is the difference between a generation queue and a load queue?
A generation queue holds requests to connect new supply — a solar farm, a battery, a gas plant. A load queue holds requests to connect new demand — a data centre, a factory, an electrified industrial site. They are administered separately, published separately, and a megawatt in one is not comparable to a megawatt in the other.
Answered from Watt Street’s own dataset — 39,173 interconnection requests across 56 US queues, data as of 15 August 2026. Method.
Why the distinction has started to matter
For thirty years the interesting queue was the generation queue. Large new loads were rare and predictable. That changed: single sites now request capacity comparable to a mid-sized city, and the two queues have to be read together to see whether supply is arriving where demand is.
Where to see both
The generation queue is covered by every state and queue page on this site. The demand side is the Load Ledger.