- Paces cites a roughly one-in-five completion rate for US utility-scale projects entering development pipelines, with interconnection and permitting responsible for much of the attrition.
- The key development principle is to pull risk discovery forward: fail weak sites before years of studies, land cost and internal effort accumulate.
- For power-hungry loads, the binding metric is increasingly time-to-power, not headline LCOE.
- A renewable-plus-storage hybrid with deliberate firming can be faster and more controllable than waiting for a grid connection or trying to eliminate the final few percent of fuel use.
- Transformers, switchgear, PCS, containers and generation equipment belong in the first development screen because procurement can control the schedule.
Most project risk appears before construction
Paces’ starting point is a sobering development statistic: only a minority of projects taken into a utility-scale pipeline ultimately reach construction. Many projects that look viable on a spreadsheet fail later on grid cost, permitting, land or community constraints — after substantial time and money have already been committed.
The useful lesson is sequencing. Traditional development often spends deeply before the most dangerous assumptions have been tested. A better process scores completion risk early and advances only sites with a credible pathway through interconnection, approvals and procurement.
Why interconnection kills apparently good projects
- Queue position is not usable capacity. A project can wait behind speculative applications and still receive an uneconomic connection outcome.
- Upgrade cost arrives late. A transformer, substation or protection requirement can destroy the economics after the site has already absorbed development spend.
- Grid conditions change while the project waits. Available capacity can be consumed by other projects, and assumptions made at origination may not survive the study process.
- Planning risk can move in the opposite direction. Areas with attractive grid capacity may attract concentrated development and trigger local opposition or new restrictions.
The metric flips to time-to-power
For fast-growing loads such as data centres, a grid offer several years away may have little practical value. The opportunity cost of delay can exceed the premium for building dedicated generation beside the load. That pushes projects behind the meter and changes the comparison from “which option has the lowest standalone LCOE?” to “which option can deliver reliable power in the required window?”
Remote mines have always faced a version of the same decision. They build power because extending or strengthening the grid is slow, expensive or impossible. What is changing is that the same logic is now being validated by large, capital-rich energy users.
The hybrid logic
The Paces off-grid analysis points to a familiar cost curve: high renewable shares can remain competitive when firming is retained, while the final move toward 100% renewable supply becomes disproportionately expensive. The system must then overbuild generation and storage to cover rare low-resource periods.
For a mine or industrial site, the practical architecture is therefore not “battery instead of engines”. It is:
- a renewable block carrying a large share of annual energy;
- BESS providing shifting, ramp control, peak support and short-duration firming;
- diesel or gas generation retained for deep lulls, contingencies and reliability;
- a future grid connection, longer-duration asset or additional renewable block treated as an option rather than a prerequisite.
This is also the commercial answer to “why not 100% renewable?” The last few percent are not free ambition. They are an explicit reliability and capital decision.
The constraint that models often omit: equipment
Development schedules can be lost in procurement as easily as in permitting. Long-lead transformers, switchgear, PCS, battery containers and generation equipment may decide when a project can energise. A credible time-to-power plan therefore needs supplier engagement, lead-time evidence, deposit assumptions and interface ownership early in development.
Three lessons for Heliovulcan
- Development risk is part of the product. The value of Pre-DD is surfacing approval, site, grid, boundary and financeability gaps before formal development spend.
- Off-grid hybrid is an economic pathway, not a fallback. For remote and constrained sites it can provide a faster, self-controlled route to power while preserving reliability.
- Schedule and equipment belong in the first client conversation. A technically attractive design without a credible procurement and energisation pathway is not development-ready.
The Pre-DD takeaway
Drawn from MCJ’s “Inevitable” podcast with James McWalter, CEO of Paces, and the Paces / Scale Microgrids / Stripe Climate off-grid analysis. US completion, interconnection, permitting, site-availability and equipment figures are signals from that discussion, not Australian benchmarks. The Australian mine and industrial hybrid application is independent analysis. Commentary for discussion — not investment, engineering or planning advice.