Last week I said the Batch Zero scoreboard was self-reported and that ERCOT had published nothing. On September 11, two days before that issue went out, ERCOT filed the aggregate in Project 59142, and the numbers are worth the wait: 362 large loads and 191.8 GW made it into Batch Zero, split between 66.4 GW of base load and 125.4 GW of studied load. 302.2 GW across 373 projects did not. The studied bucket, the one that gets studied rather than served, is almost twice the size of the one that gets served.
Then the state started counting in earnest. ERCOT issued 231 notarized eligibility questionnaires due September 23, sent a community impact survey to 461 data center projects due October 12, and the Governor told the Water Development Board to start referring data centers that skip the water survey to prosecutors. The ERCOT board chose the same week to approve a compensation package for its CEO with a potential 2027 value of $6.47 million and to raise its own pay 30 percent. The CEO package lasted about six hours. The board raise is still on the books. Elsewhere, Oracle bought 1.7 GW of existing West Texas wind on paper for Abilene, and Blue Energy filed the first half of a nuclear construction permit at the Port of Victoria. Five stories, one theme: the era of announcing megawatts is over, and the era of documenting them has arrived.
191.8 GW In, 302.2 GW Out, and 0 of 231 Have Hit Submit
The September 11 filing, signed by Chad Seely, ERCOT's general counsel, is the first category-by-category accounting of the September 3 conditional classifications. Base load, the 66.4 GW that ERCOT intends to plan around, breaks down as follows: 9,085 MW across 50 projects energized before March 25, 2022; 13,176 MW across 54 energized since; 6,604 MW across 17 that were in the May 2026 QSA or IVRT rounds or earlier; 3,360 MW across 10 in the Permian Reliability Plan; 4,173 MW across 13 "committed" loads; a single 1,200 MW PURA 39.169 net-metering load; and the big one, 28,761 MW across 59 "advancing" loads. Advancing is the largest base-load category by a wide margin, and it is the category built entirely on attestations of financial commitment. That is where the December verification report will do its work.
Studied load is 125.4 GW across 158 projects. Of that, 9,478 MW across 11 projects elected the WLPUN path, 8,515 MW across 11 elected to be price-responsive under PCLR, and 107,398 MW across 136 projects asked for firm service and got a study. Nine loads are in conditionally, subject to a future good-cause exception on eligibility. And every number carries the same footnote, which I will reproduce because it is the most honest sentence in the deck: "#s and MWs are subject to change based upon dispute processes and eligibility verification process."
Now the verification tracker, as of 7:00 a.m. on September 11. 231 RFIs issued, 100 percent delivered, 187 of 231 handed off to an external contact at the company, 16 of 231 with any answers saved, and zero submitted. Total answers saved across all 231 questionnaires: 0.9 percent. All 231 are due September 23. Two hundred ninety-two people have portal access, 228 of them on accounts created for this exercise. The RFIs cover 59 advancing loads, 13 committed loads, the one net-metering load, and all 158 studied loads; the templates for the QSA, IVRT and Permian buckets are still marked TBD, and a separate site-verification RFI that "will aid in site inspection" is still pending. December 10 is the filing date for the Batch Zero Eligibility Verification Report and the Community Impact Review Report. December 17 is the open meeting where the Commission gets to act on them. That is the real Batch Zero deadline. Everything between now and then is discovery.
"Very, Very Intrusive": 461 Surveys, About 130 Questions, and a Water Code Offense
The second questionnaire is the one nobody had priced in. The State and Community Impact RFI, issued September 14 under the Governor's August directive, goes to 461 data center projects: 214 medium loads of at least 25 MW and under 75 MW totaling 12,535 MW, and 247 Batch Zero large loads totaling 168,238 MW. Energized data centers are exempt. ERCOT's slide describes "approximately 130 questions that are the same for every recipient"; Houston Public Media, which counted the sub-questions in the released instrument, puts it at more than 250 across nine sections: facility information, reasons for development, financial assistance, power self-sufficiency, water sources and consumption, cooling technologies, community impact, ownership and controlling interests, and a notarized attestation. Responses are due by 5:00 p.m. on October 12. ERCOT "will provide PUCT and Governor a list of non-responding entities," and Seely told commissioners on September 11 that ERCOT will "have essentially a report card where we think that there are deficiencies in responses and be able to make that public as well."
Ed Hirs at the University of Houston gave Houston Public Media the line of the week: "This is going to be considered to be very, very intrusive in a state that usually has a good reputation for free market principles." Maria Faconti of K&L Gates gave the more useful one: "I think there are a lot of people who think that the legislature will make changes, but no one knows really what those changes will be." Asked what happens to companies that do not complete the survey, PUCT spokesman Rich Parsons had previously said in an email that those situations "would be addressed on a case-by-case basis." Case-by-case is a policy. It is just not a published one.
Water got its own enforcement track. On September 14 Governor Abbott directed the Texas Water Development Board to refer past and future failures to file the annual water use survey to county and district attorneys, to notify TCEQ so the non-filer becomes ineligible for permits, amendments or renewals under Chapter 11 of the Water Code, to coordinate with the PUCT and ERCOT on the audit, and to report back by October 14. "Data centers must share the duty to protect Texas water," the Governor said. The Texas Tribune, which pulled the TWDB compliance records, found the industry's track record on the survey: 22 data centers surveyed in 2023 with a 32 percent response rate, 67 in 2024 at 28 percent, and 329 in 2025 at nearly 30 percent. Of 267 facilities new to the survey in 2025, 22.5 percent complied. Failing to file is, per the Tribune's reading of the code, a Class C misdemeanor. It has apparently never been treated as one.
The counter-example arrived the same day, and it was not a coincidence. Cipher Digital, Fluidstack and Anthropic committed $10 million to a new Colorado City Water Infrastructure Foundation to repair the town's well pump station after July storm damage; the mayor told San Angelo LIVE the total rebuild is about $27 million once two grants are counted. Anthropic's Ryan Wilson: "Communities that host AI infrastructure should be better off for it." That is the sentence every one of the 461 survey recipients now has to be able to say with a straight face, in writing, in front of a notary.
"Not the Time to Give the CEO of ERCOT a Multi-Million-Dollar Pay Raise on the Backs of Ratepayers"
Into this atmosphere the ERCOT board walked on Tuesday, September 15, and approved a new employment agreement for CEO Pablo Vegas. The board item lays out a six-year term from January 2027 through December 2032, the final year of the current contract rolled in, so effectively a five-year extension, with 2027 potential earned compensation of $6,470,398: roughly $1.1 million base, a short-term incentive of about the same, a long-term incentive above $2 million, a $587,007 deferred compensation contribution, and a final $1,385,000 make-whole payment from his 2022 hire. The Texas Tribune reported the vote; a PUC spokesperson confirmed commissioners voted the same day to grant the contract, which the board's own resolution made subject to Commission approval. ERCOT later argued the number to print was $4.1 million of maximum 2027 cash pay, which excludes the deferred contribution and counts the long-term award at a $420,000 payment rather than target. Vegas earned $3.6 million in 2024 and is on track for about $4 million this year.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick posted within hours: "During a time of increasing utility costs, this is not the time to give the CEO of ERCOT a multi-million-dollar pay raise on the backs of ratepayers." By the end of the day chairman Bill Flores said the board would not finalize the contract, PUC chairman Thomas Gleeson said the Commission would defer further action, and Vegas told the Tribune it would not be executed and he would remain under his current agreement. No rescission vote was taken. Flores, on the record before the reversal: "This contract extension reflects the value that Pablo has added to this organization over the last four challenging years..." Vegas, after: "Clearly there's an opportunity to clear up what was meant by this contract, and everyone would be well served understanding that better." The board that must accept ERCOT's December verification reports on 191.8 GW of load just discovered it operates with roughly the same political cover as the loads it is verifying.
The item that did not get reversed is the board's own. In the same meeting the directors raised their own compensation 30 percent, from an average of $169,375 to $219,375: a $160,000 base plus a $150,000 retention award vesting at the end of each three-year term, prorated for sitting directors. Flores's own pay goes from $195,000 to $250,000. Effective October 1. Unanimous, Flores abstaining. ERCOT's benchmark for peer nonprofit grid operator directors, from the Meridian study in the board packet, is $150,889. Patrick's Thursday follow-up: "My suggestion to them is to reverse their own increase. If they do not want to serve, I am sure there are plenty of public-service minded Texans who are willing to take their place." For scale, ERCOT cut its administrative fee from $0.63 to $0.61 per MWh at the start of the year on a budget of nearly $486 million, and Texas residential rates have risen about 40 percent since 2020, from 11.50 to 16.11 cents per kWh by ElectricChoice's count. The board raise costs ratepayers almost nothing. It costs the board something else, and they will find out what in the next session.
Oracle Buys 1.7 GW of Existing West Texas Wind for Abilene. New Megawatts: Zero.
Oracle announced on September 15 agreements covering more than 1.7 GW across ten Texas wind projects with Clearway Energy, ENGIE, RWE and Scout Clean Energy, all feeding the ERCOT grid that serves its Abilene campus. Oracle calls them investments in wind energy generation projects; the output, it says, equals the consumption of more than 525,000 U.S. homes and avoids 1.8 million metric tons of CO2 a year against the ERCOT baseline. Mahesh Thiagarajan, executive vice president of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, framed it as progress toward matching "100 percent of AI data center electricity use with carbon-free electricity by 2035" and as "paying our own way for the energy we use."
The sellers' releases are where the megawatts live. RWE signed a 433 MW virtual power purchase agreement from its existing Panther Creek I, II and III wind farms in Sterling, Howard and Glasscock counties, wind farms that have been running since the late 2000s and were repowered in 2019 and 2021. ENGIE will supply up to 568 MW under what it calls renewable energy supply agreements. Clearway and Scout have not disclosed their share. Only RWE uses the words "virtual PPA," and only RWE says its assets are existing, but a repowered 2009 wind farm is not being built twice. Read the announcement for what it is: a financial hedge and a carbon accounting instrument for a campus that draws firm power from the grid. It adds no capacity to ERCOT, no firming, and no answer to the community impact survey's section on power self-sufficiency. It does put Oracle on the right side of the "paying our own way" argument at exactly the moment the state started asking who is.
Blue Energy Files Half a Construction Permit at the Port of Victoria: Gas in 2030, Reactors in 2032
On September 16 Blue Energy submitted the first part of a construction permit application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its gas-to-nuclear plant at the Port of Victoria, in Victoria County. The design, per the company's August and September releases: approximately 1 GW from two GE Vernova 7HA.02 gas turbines first, then up to 1.5 GW from as many as five GE Vernova Hitachi BWRX-300 small modular reactors, 2.5 GW in total. The turbines are expected online in 2030 and the first reactor in 2032, both subject to a final investment decision in 2027. The filing asks the NRC to allow limited construction activities, including deep foundation and shaft work, so the gas plant can be built while the nuclear review proceeds, and it carries a nearly 300-page environmental report. Part two comes in the second half of 2027 after a year of site-specific data collection.
The money: more than $400 million raised to date, including a July strategic investment from Constellation Technology Ventures, with Societe Generale retained this month to structure project finance. In GE Vernova's own release, GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy CEO Jason Cooper said the quiet part: "This is what fleet deployment looks like: projects advancing on common technology, licensing work and supply chain capabilities..." The customer, per World Nuclear News, is Crusoe's planned campus nearby, though neither primary release names it. The sequencing is the story. A plant that is 1 GW of gas in 2030 and 2.5 GW of gas plus nuclear in 2032 is a plant that can sign a firm power contract today, which is more than any of Oracle's ten wind farms can say, and it is the first Texas developer to put that specific claim in front of the NRC in a construction permit filing. Watch whether the NRC grants the limited work authorization; that is the mechanism every other gas-first developer in the state is waiting to copy.
What to Watch Next Week
Tuesday, September 22: Regional Planning Group, 9:30 a.m. The RPG meets while 231 questionnaires are still open. Watch for the first transmission project tied explicitly to a base-load large load rather than a studied one.
Wednesday, September 23: the eligibility RFIs come due. Extensions of up to five business days are permissible under Market Notice M-A090926-01, and every company that takes one will be visible. As of September 11, zero of 231 had submitted. Watch for the first public disclosure of a miss, and for the first company with listed equity that says nothing at all.
Thursday, September 24: Batch 1+ and Comprehensive Transmission Planning Workshop #2, 9:30 a.m. The first workshop on August 31 opened the financial security question. This is the meeting where the 302.2 GW that did not make Batch Zero finds out what the next door costs.
Monday, September 28: construction is scheduled to start at Hut 8's Beacon Point. The TDLR filing registered September 9 lists 657,130 square feet, a construction cost of nearly $399 million, and a schedule of September 28, 2026 through November 5, 2027 at 4650 FM 1694 outside Robstown, against two 15-year, 352 MW leases with a combined $19.6 billion base-term value. The Nueces County lease I inferred last week now has a construction schedule on file with the state.
No PUCT open meeting this week. The next are October 1 and October 15. The October 6 SB6 Large Load Curtailment workshop, the October 12 community impact deadline and the October 14 TWDB report to the Governor are the three dates that decide whether the audit has teeth. Jupiter Power, meanwhile, disclosed $1.4 billion of storage financing closed between April and July across 1,500 MW and 3,600 MWh in Texas and Michigan, including Callisto II and Pamela Heights I in Harris County. Batteries do not fill out surveys. That is increasingly the point.
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.
