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Re-Reading the ESS Grid-Interconnection Queue in the Language of Line Balancing
The stalled BESS (Battery Energy Storage System) commissioning cases in the US, reported successively by Bloomberg and Slashdot in August 2026, show that even after equipment is completed, delays recur at a separate bottleneck section called the grid-interconnection queue. BESS accounts for about 50 GW of MISO's total 650 GW queue, the number of NYISO's queued projects grew from 176 in 2018 to 350 in 2025, and the median wait time to reach commercial operation approaches 5 years. This article redefines this phenomenon using the line-engineering concepts of buffer, interface, and takt time, analyzing it as a work-in-process inventory structure in which completed equipment piles up without being able to…


