How America's solar and storage developers move projects from opportunity to operation.
The report combines project-level analysis of the active U.S. solar and battery-storage development universe with structured executive interviews. Ten sections are planned; each is published only when its evidence is complete.
Clean Energy Development Operations is the set of people, processes, information systems, workflows and stakeholder interactions required to move a clean-energy project from opportunity through development and toward commercial operation.
Capacity statistics describe what got built. This report examines the operating layer that determines whether a project gets built at all — and it is the layer least visible in existing industry data.
The quantitative base is the project-level interconnection queue dataset published by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, filtered for active status and solar and/or battery technology.
active solar and/or battery-storage project records
records that identify a developer in the source dataset
source-derived developer identities undergoing entity resolution
active records with no developer name in the source
Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Queued Up 2026; CEDP analysis of active solar and battery-storage projects. Data through year-end 2025.
Berkeley Lab source & methodology — link pendingHow projects move — and stall — across origination, qualification, site control, interconnection, permitting, commercial, financing, procurement, construction and commercial operation.
Research in progressWho is actually developing active solar and storage projects in the United States, how those organizations are structured, and how much of the queue cannot yet be attributed to a resolved developer.
Research in progressWhere development time is lost: the longest stages, the least predictable ones, and the delay sources executives identify from their own pipelines.
Research in progressUtilities, regulators, landowners, offtakers, EPCs, suppliers, capital providers and communities — how many parties a project depends on, and how information moves between them.
Research in progressWhat development organizations actually run: CRM, project management, GIS, interconnection tracking, document management, proposal tools and knowledge systems — and where the gaps sit between them.
Research in progressHow proposals and RFP responses are produced: who is involved, how long it takes, what is reused, and what it costs a development team to compete.
Research in progressWhere project knowledge lives, how it survives staff turnover and multi-year cycles, and how long it takes to retrieve what a decision requires.
Research in progressCurrent use, active experiments, restricted uses, the workflow executives are most interested in automating — and the one they say they would never automate.
Research in progressA comparative view of how development organizations are staffed, structured and run, built from the structured interview record rather than from individual participant disclosures.
Research in progressIn their own words: the change to process, market structure or technology that executives believe would most reduce development cycle time.
Research in progressNo section conclusions have been published. Section scopes above describe what each chapter will examine; findings appear only once the underlying evidence is complete and classified under the research methodology.
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