Two stories landed on the same Wednesday this week and they deserve to be read together. Hut 8 announced a 15-year, $9.8 billion triple-net take-or-pay lease at its Nueces County campus — 352 MW of NVIDIA DSX-spec capacity to an unnamed "high-investment-grade hyperscaler." Hours later, the Texas Tribune confirmed that for the first time since January 2016, gas projects have passed wind in ERCOT's interconnection queue. About 64,000 MW of gas, 48,000 MW of wind, against a load forecast that says Texas needs roughly 360 GW of new everything by 2032.

These are the same story. The capital is showing up — first as 15-year lease commitments from credit-grade tenants, then as study deposits in the queue, then, eventually, as steel in the ground. What hasn't shown up yet is the steel. ERCOT cleared its first Texas Energy Fund gas plant onto the grid this week, two years and 460 MW into a $7.2 billion program. That is roughly 1.6 percent of the load growth ERCOT thinks it has to plan for.

Hut 8 Books a $9.8 Billion Tenant, and Sets the Comp

Hut 8 disclosed on May 6 that it had executed a 15-year, triple-net, take-or-pay lease for the first 352 MW of IT capacity at its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County. Base term contract value is $9.8 billion. Three five-year renewal options bring the disclosed all-in maximum to roughly $25.1 billion. The tenant is identified only as "high-investment-grade." Bloomberg confirmed neither side would name the counterparty. The stock popped about 30 percent on the news.

The site is permitted for 1 GW of utility capacity; first data hall delivery is Q3 2027. The build spec is NVIDIA DSX, the new hyperscaler reference design for liquid-cooled, 130–150 kW-per-rack AI training. That last detail is the one to underline. The lease contemplates training and inference, not hash power. Hut 8 is not selling power; it is selling fully built, NVIDIA-spec, ready-to-rack data hall.

Run the math on the disclosed base term. $9.8 billion divided by 352 MW divided by 15 years works out to roughly $1.86 million per MW per year of base rent, before the renewal escalators. Strip out the implied capex amortization and you still have a real-money number for the rest of the Texas miner land bank. Every Riot, MARA, Cipher, IREN, and Bitfarms site in West Texas is now being valued — by their boards and by their activist shareholders — against a $9.8 billion comp that just printed.

I covered the AMD–Riot–Rockdale pivot two weeks ago as the moment the miner-to-AI-landlord trade booked its first real quarter at 50 MW and $636 million. This is the same trade, an order of magnitude bigger, with three letters that matter most: NVIDIA DSX. The activists who told Riot to do this will tell every other miner to do this, and they will be pointing at $9.8 billion.

For the First Time in a Decade, the Texas Queue Wants Gas

The Texas Tribune and Houston Public Media reported on May 7 that gas-fired generation has now passed wind in ERCOT's interconnection queue for the first time since January 2016. Roughly 64,000 MW of gas against 48,000 MW of wind. Three years ago, gas in the queue was 12,500 MW. That is a roughly 410 percent increase in 36 months.

Two things to note. First, queue position is not steel. Developers post study deposits, get a slot, and a meaningful share of those projects never reach commercial operation — historical ERCOT attrition is north of 80 percent. Second, queue composition still tells you what people are willing to pay deposits on, and right now they are paying gas deposits even though Mitsubishi Power, Siemens Energy, and GE Vernova have sold their next available turbine slots into 2030. I flagged the GE Vernova 100 GW backlog three weeks ago. It has not gotten better.

About 9,000 MW of the queued gas is Texas Energy Fund-backed. The rest is unsubsidized speculation against the data-center number. The story isn't that wind is dying — wind in the queue grew 87 percent over the same window. The story is that the Texas grid mix everyone in this state has spent the last decade pricing in is no longer the marginal direction. Marginal new megawatts are now gas-plus-storage with a hyperscaler counterparty, and the developer pool sees that.

Pin Oak Creek Energizes: TEF's First Real Plant, 460 MW Behind a $7.2 Billion Promise

Calpine's Pin Oak Creek peaking facility began feeding the ERCOT North zone this week. 460 MW, Freestone County, $464 million project cost, with a $278 million Texas Energy Fund loan at 3 percent for 20 years. NRG's 456 MW Houston-region TEF unit is expected to follow "later this summer." Those two are the only TEF megawatts that will be on the grid by Labor Day.

The program-level math: about $2.65 billion committed and 3,564 MW awarded, against a $7.2 billion legislative authorization. Roughly 37 percent of the program is committed by dollars, and roughly 6 percent of awarded megawatts has actually energized.

Now the comparison the bond market should be making. ERCOT's preliminary load forecast — the same one I described two issues ago as filed-then-disavowed-by-its-own-staff — wants 290,000 MW of net new peak demand by 2032. The TEF program at full disbursement adds maybe 8,000 MW of dispatchable. That is not a financing problem. That is a turbine, transmission, and labor problem, and the program was always going to be a rounding error against the load number. The first 460 MW of it is on the grid now. Two years in.

Batch Zero Clears PRS and ROS — June 1 Board Vote, August 1 Effective

While the press releases were going out, the actual rulemaking that decides who gets to plug in to the Texas grid moved a step closer to law. ERCOT's Protocols Revision Subcommittee voted on May 6 and the Reliability and Operations Subcommittee voted on May 7 to send PGRR145 and NPRR1325 — the SB 6 implementation package — to the Technical Advisory Committee. ERCOT's chair has set June 1 as the Board deadline; the target effective date is August 1, 2026.

The mechanics, briefly. The protocol creates "Batch 0" for large loads of ≥75 MW that have already executed an interconnection agreement, grandfathering them into the existing study process. Everyone else — including the long tail of speculative data-center load that drove the 367,790 MW forecast number — gets routed into a new annual batch process. Studies aggregate by transmission service provider region. The PUCT has signaled in commentary that it intends to use batch admission to police what counts as a "real" load, with EAR-style filing requirements following behind.

This is the rule that decides whether the queue numbers ERCOT keeps publishing actually translate into transmission planning. If the Batch 0 grandfathering is generous, the queue stays bloated. If it isn't, expect a ten-figure cull of phantom load projects in Q3. Watch the PUCT companion rulemaking on 16 TAC §25.194 — comments closed April 17, and the order is expected before Batch 0's August 1 effective date.

TeraWulf Q1: Lease Revenue Crosses Hash Power for the First Time

TeraWulf reported its Q1 2026 results on May 8. Total revenue: $34.0 million. HPC hosting and lease income: $21.0 million — the first quarter in the company's history where lease revenue is the larger line. Cash and restricted cash: $3.1 billion. Net loss per share: $1.01, mostly depreciation. The company also closed a $250 million revolver in the period.

For Texas readers, two disclosures matter. First, a new 480 MW site acquisition at Hawesville, Kentucky, with hyperscaler interest. Second, more relevant: the Abernathy, Texas joint venture is now slotted at 168 MW under a 25-year lease, with Q4 2026 first energization. That is a 25-year contracted Texas counterparty number from a miner whose stock used to move with the BTC chart.

The pattern from the last three weeks is consistent enough to call. AMD-Riot-Rockdale, 50 MW, $636 million. Hut 8-Beacon Point, 352 MW, $9.8 billion. TeraWulf-Abernathy, 168 MW, 25 years. Different miners, different scales, same trade. The miner-to-landlord pivot is no longer a thesis. It is the Q1 print.

What to Watch Next Week

CleanSpark fiscal Q2 2026 earnings, May 11. Texas and Wyoming AI-site disclosures are expected; the specific question is whether CleanSpark's Vegas/Las Cruces megasite gets a counterparty letter before the call.

MARA Holdings Q1 2026 print midweek. Granbury and Kaufman site updates are the read. Any Exaion-linked deployment in Texas would be material.

ERCOT TAC vote on PGRR145/NPRR1325 the week of May 12. This is the gate before the June 1 Board vote. If TAC sends back amendments, the August 1 effective date slips, and the queue stays the queue.

Waha basis. The June prompt closed at -$5.69/MMBtu on May 1. Watch the negative-print streak count and the in-service date for Kinder Morgan's GCX expansion. Negative basis with a hyperscaler counterparty buying the molecule on the long-haul is the trade somebody is going to do explicitly soon.

Stargate Freebird in Milam County. The TDLR filing for the $470 million first phase has an October 15 completion target. Any amendment to that filing or any sign of substation work in OASIS is news.

Disclaimer: The Grid Report is Barrio Energy's market intelligence product. Nothing here is investment advice. Links go to primary sources wherever possible; form your own view.