For many years, small-scale energy production has played a critical role in Pennsylvania’s energy sector, providing clean and reliable electricity to local communities across the state. Despite this, project developers often lack basic transparency and business-certainty while trying to receive approval from electric utility companies to connect their projects to the power grid, also known as the interconnection process. As a prime example of this issue, if the developer wants to know the status of their application or how long it will take to complete, they typically wait weeks or even months to receive an update from the utility company.
Predictability is essential for any business to thrive, and the lack thereof only hurts economic growth and deters meaningful investments from the Commonwealth. That is why we will soon be introducing legislation to require electric utility companies to create an online portal that provides real-time updates on the status of a developer’s interconnection application, such as estimated completion time, current stage of review, and any ongoing delays.
Some electric utility companies have already voluntarily taken these steps to improve transparency for developers, and we believe it’s important that this be the standard across the entire industry. By making these simple improvements to the interconnection process, we can foster a more business-friendly environment for local energy generation, promote high-quality job growth, and maintain our position as a nationwide leader in the energy sector.
We ask that you please join me in co-sponsoring this common sense, pro-business legislation.