US transmission interconnection queue: power availability, not chip availability, gates new datacentre capacity (LBNL Queued Up 2026)

No price. This record is about a constraint, not a product - power is not purchasable at retail on any published tariff, which is precisely why the queue is the binding constraint.

lead_time_weeks is null and the quantity is a DIFFERENT lead time than an accelerator's: this record's subject is the grid-interconnection queue, whose wait is measured in YEARS (LBNL 'Queued Up'), not weeks. An accelerator lead time would be the wrong number for the constraint this record actually measures. Recorded as structural-na because 'lead time' here means something else, not because no one publishes accelerator lead times.

EAR 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) + EAR 744.23/744.6 (Entity, Unverified, MEU list screening of the end user) + the advanced-computing IaaS obligations of 91 FR 1684 (consignee KYC, and management/limitation of IaaS access to the hardware)

LAYER 1, EXPORT LICENCE: under the Jan 2026 BIS rule 91 FR 1684 (effective 2026-01-15) the license review policy for advanced-computing commodities with TPP < 21,000 AND total DRAM bandwidth < 6,500 GB/s - the NVIDIA H200 and AMD MI325X are the rule's named examples - moved from PRESUMPTION OF DENIAL to CASE-BY-CASE REVIEW, but only for exports FROM THE UNITED STATES to end users located in China or Macau, and only against six exporter certifications filed via SNAP-R before shipment: (1) items below the thresholds with the count of units shipped in the US; (2) sufficient US supply, judged 'taking into account normal lead times'; (3) no diversion of global foundry capacity away from US end users; (4) aggregate China+Macau shipments <= 50% of total US end-use shipments of that product; (5) no end-user or use prohibition; (6) the consignee runs rigorous KYC. Every shipment must then pass a qualified third-party testing lab - US-headquartered, not controlled by a D:5/Macau entity, no ownership stake in any party, qualification revocable by BIS at any time - verifying TPP, total DRAM bandwidth, interconnect bandwidth and copackaged DRAM capacity. Reexports and in-country transfers of the same chips to China/Macau REMAIN PRESUMPTION OF DENIAL. LAYER 2, END-USER AND PARENT SCREENING: per BIS guidance of 2026-05-31 a licence is required where the consignee is HEADQUARTERED in Country Group D:5 (15 CFR part 740 supplement no. 1) or Macau OR whose ULTIMATE PARENT COMPANY is so headquartered - even when the consignee itself sits outside D:5/Macau. The requirement sits at EAR 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) for destinations outside the US, with an exception available only under the license exception at 740.2(a)(9)(ii). The destination country alone therefore never answers the question; screen the parent. LAYER 3, REMAINING LIMITS: exports to D:5/Macau-headquartered OR -parented entities stay PRESUMPTION OF DENIAL wherever the buyer sits, and the AI Diffusion Rule that would have set a country-tier structure on who could lawfully buy what was RESCINDED on 2025-05-13 and is not being enforced, so any recorded status rests on the instruments named here rather than on tiering.

THE REGIONS-ANGLE RECORD: WHERE THE CONSTRAINT IS POWER RATHER THAN SILICON. Berkeley Lab's 'Queued Up: 2026 Edition' (data through end of 2025, published 2026-05/06) is the primary dataset on this and the figures are stark. Over 2,060 GW of total generation AND STORAGE capacity was actively seeking grid connection; ~8,200 active projects comprising 1,312 GW of generation and ~749 GW of storage. Of that, 549 GW already holds a draft or executed interconnection agreement but has NOT reached commercial operation - 256 GW solar, 161 GW storage, 76 GW wind, 45 GW gas. The number that decides deployment timelines: 'The time projects spend in queues before reaching COD is increasing. For the regions with available data, the median duration from IR to COD was over 5 YEARS for projects built in 2025.' And the attrition: only 13% of capacity that requested interconnection in 2000-2020 had reached commercial operation by end of 2025, with 75% withdrawn and 10% still active. WHY THIS MATTERS FOR AN AI-INFERENCE BUYER SPECIFICALLY: a 1 MW IT deployment is a first-order load on a transmission system, and the ~5-year median IR-to-COD interval is the yardstick for how long new power takes - the same order of magnitude as, or longer than, GPU lead times. 'How long until I can deploy' is frequently a grid question even when the accelerator is sitting in a warehouse. It is also the strongest argument for preferring EXISTING power: brownfield capacity in an already-energised building skips this queue entirely, which argues for the colo tier-1 tier (8.3-20 kW/rack) over greenfield. IMPORTANT SCOPE LIMIT, STATED BECAUSE IT IS EASY TO OVERCLAIM: the LBNL dataset explicitly EXCLUDES load interconnection requests and distribution-connected or behind-the-meter projects, so this record bounds GENERATION-side availability of new power. A datacentre wanting to connect LOAD faces a separate and often faster load-connection queue that this dataset does not measure - anyone citing 'over 5 years' as the wait for a datacentre grid connection is citing the wrong queue. The 13%-realised figure is also about generation projects, most of which are wind and solar with different economics from a 24x7 firm datacentre load, so read it as evidence that the queue is slow and lossy in general, not as a precise forecast for any one project. EXPORT CONTROL (2026-10-04, mechanism-level; sources spl-bis-2026-05-d5-guidance, spl-bis-2026-01-advanced-computing-case-by-case): renting capacity does NOT remove the export-control question, it relocates it. Providing remote access to controlled computing capability can constitute a transfer under the EAR, so the provider must screen the end user; and separately, under the 91 FR 1684 licence regime the consignee must run KYC procedures to prevent unauthorized remote access and must manage and limit IaaS access to the hardware - obligations pushed onto the customer, who must be told to implement them. For a customer headquartered or parented in Country Group D:5 or Macau the 742.6(a)(6)(iii)(A) end-user/parent test can bite even when the capacity is consumed in a permitted region. Recorded true because the underlying hardware is controlled and the provider carries the screening duty, not because access to a US region is itself restricted. LEAD TIME: null - and for this record that is the WRONG QUESTION, which is the point worth recording. This record measures a build constraint that is not the accelerator supply chain: the lead time for a 120 kW liquid-cooled rack is set by construction, electrical service, and CDU/manifold plumbing, not by GPU allocation. Its own notes already make this argument for the colo case, so this entry only fixes the boundary: do not read a GPU lead time into a facility lead time, and do not read a facility lead time into a GPU lead time. No vendor publishes a weeks figure for either, so both stay null - probe log in source spl-negative-no-oem-publishes-lead-time. Where a real published horizon exists for the supply side it is on the accelerator record (NVIDIA's $95.2bn purchase and supply/capacity obligations substantially payable through FY2027, source spl-nvda-10k-fy2026-supply-commitments).