## Queue Depth as a Time-to-Power Proxy Great Britain's National Energy System Operator (NESO) interconnection queue holds 600 GW of requested load as of August 2026. That figure represents more than **five times** the UK's current peak de
## Queue Depth as a Time-to-Power Proxy
Great Britain's National Energy System Operator (NESO) interconnection queue holds 600 GW of requested load as of August 2026. That figure represents more than **five times** the UK's current peak demand of roughly 60 GW, signaling multi-year energization timelines for new large loads entering the grid.
For hyperscale operators and developers evaluating London—already the lowest-ranked market in DC Hub's DCPI at 16.9 Excess Power and 77.8% Constraint—the queue depth confirms what transmission scores already suggest: time-to-power in NESO will stretch well beyond 36 months for new capacity requests filed today.
## What It Means for Site Selection
Capacity planners must now price a **minimum three-year delay** into UK site decisions, or look to markets where queue depth and transmission headroom align. For comparison, US markets in the top DCPI quartile—Midland–Odessa (85.7 Excess, 22.8% Constraint), Oklahoma City (76.5 Excess, 47.1% Constraint)—pair low constraint ratios with interconnection queues that represent 12–18 months of energization timelines, not years.
The NESO queue data also clarifies why Dublin (24.3 Excess, 78.5% Constraint, EirGrid) and Amsterdam (21.7 Excess, 76.0% Constraint, ENTSOE-NL) rank alongside London in the bottom three DCPI markets: all three face transmission saturation compounded by regulatory and grid-capacity friction that queue depth makes visible.
## Methodology
DC Hub's DCPI scores 323 markets daily on Excess Power (generation headroom) and Constraint (transmission bottleneck risk). Markets below 30/100 Excess signal multi-year time-to-power; those above 70/100 signal sub-18-month energization timelines for new loads. NESO queue data cross-validates the Constraint metric's predictive power.
**Source:** DC Hub Data Center Power Index (https://dchub.cloud/dcpi). Updated daily. NESO interconnection data: https://www.neso.energy/data-portal/transmission-entry-capacity-tec-register
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