The Southwest Power Pool (SPP) has announced that its Expedited Resource Adequacy Study (ERAS) program window will open on September 3, staying open for 30 days for project interconnection applications.

Steve Purdy, SPP’s technical director of engineering, told NPM that the project applications for interconnection can be submitted from a developer or utility, but every project will need to have been selected by a load responsible entity (LRE).

“The way the process works is with the application they must submit a selection form signed by an LRE for it to be validated,” he explained. “They could submit one and follow up with a selection form, but to be validated every applicant will have to include a selection form, at least one.”

At the end of the 30-day window, Purdy said that it will be followed by a 15-day period where SPP will review all of the applications for completeness, ensure that LRE’s are selected and deposits are satisfied, and try to resolve any deficiencies in that period.

Following that will be the System Impact Study, which will run for 90 days, followed then by the 60-day Facilities Study conducted by the transmission owner where the interconnections will take place. Purdy said that in total, ERAS will last 150 days start to finish.

“We will complete the study of all of those applications in that 150-day period and issue GIAs on the basis of the study results,” he said. “How many of them sign GIAs, who knows. I expect, given the urgent nature, that they all will.”

According to NPM intel from earlier this month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) approved the ERAS proposal, which is intended to speed up the interconnection application process, after it determined that SPP adequately illustrated that its forecasted demand increased extensively, with an increase in large loads from data centers and other technologies that exacerbated accelerating demand.

In SPP’s initial May filing to FERC, it had explained that the region was “on the precipice” of a resource adequacy (RA) crisis and that it “expects available capacity to drop below the SPP balancing authority’s reserve margins by 2027 and for the region to have insufficient capacity to meet peak demand in 2030.”

Purdy said that SPP is looking forward to receiving applications and starting the process and that “hopefully that will alleviate all of the LREs’ resource adequacy needs in the short term.”

Many of the LREs in SPP’s territory have recently pursued RFPs, including Xcel Energy, as well as its subsidiary Southwestern Public Service Company (SPS), which detailed its project selections earlier this month. SPS said that it plans to move forward with 15 projects that are expected to provide around 2,525 MW of new accredited capacity by Winter 2029/2030. These included two solar, five wind, eight storage, and two gas thermal projects.

Similarly, according to NPM intel from June, Oklahoma Gas and Electric (OG&E) sought approval from the Oklahoma Corporation Commission for projects selected from its 2024 RFP process.

NPM queue data identified pre-operational projects within SPS territory that had reached an advanced stage as of the past 12 months, from the likes of Invenergy, Plus Power and Orsted.