ERCOT Large Load and Batch Zero
How ERCOT is sorting the large-load interconnection queue: Batch Zero, PGRR145, Senate Bill 6, the PUCT rules, and what it means for anyone trying to connect a data center or battery in Texas. 31 articles from The Grid Report, newest first.
- "Very, Very Intrusive": 461 Surveys, 231 Notaries, and a Board That Voted Itself a 30% Raise
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...
- ERCOT Sorted the Queue and Published Nothing, So the Market Built Its Own Scoreboard
On September 3 at 3:55 in the afternoon, ERCOT sent Market Notice M-A080326-04 to transmission and distribution service providers, telling them which large loads had been conditionally included in Batch Zero. It...
- Around the Queue, Not Through It: $35 Billion in Nueces County, 400 Miles of 765 kV, and a Batch Zero List Three Days Late
At 7:16 p.m. on Monday, August 31, ERCOT issued Market Notice M-A080326-03, informing the market that it "requires additional time to complete its data validation and due diligence processes" and would release the...
- "The Only Meaningful Remedy Remaining": Three Judges Recommend Killing the Line, and ERCOT Concedes April Is Gone
Thursday, August 20 was a busy day in Austin. At 1:52 in the afternoon, three administrative law judges filed a Proposal for Decision recommending that the Public Utility Commission deny Oncor and LCRA Transmission...
- "A Slap in the Face to the Legislative Branch": PUCT Votes on 765kV Lines Nobody in Austin Says They Approved
For six months the story in Texas transmission has been ERCOT and the transmission and distribution utilities racing to keep up with an interconnection queue growing faster than anyone can classify it. This week...
- "Already Fully Approved and Energized" — $9.1 Billion for 191 MW, and 8,766 MW Nobody Counted
Greg Abbott's August 3 letter did not stop a single data center from being built in Texas. What it did was reprice them. It sorted the market into two piles — megawatts that already hold an approved...
- "ERCOT Will Not Notify": 205 Gigawatts Miss Their Own Deadline
Today was supposed to be the day roughly 205 gigawatts of proposed Texas load found out whether it counted. Under the Batch Zero interconnection study process, ERCOT was to notify every transmission and...
- "Must Be Denied": Abbott Freezes the 474-GW Queue — and NRG Signs $3.2 Billion Anyway
On Monday, Governor Abbott sent a letter to the PUCT and ERCOT directing them to pause data center interconnections until every project in the queue survives a "comprehensive verification and audit" of its power...
- Demand First, Dirt Second: A 40 MW Pre-Lease, $50M/GW Deposit Math, and the ABS Window Reopens
The week's tape reads like the market decided dirt is the easy part. The deals that actually closed between July 28 and August 4 were contracts and credit structures — a 40 MW campus 100% pre-leased before it's...
- "Last Night It Was Nearly 12,000" — The Record Week, and 438 GW at the Door
The all-time ERCOT demand record stood for nearly three years. This week it lasted about 24 hours. On Tuesday, July 21, the grid hit 87,403 MW, finally breaking the 85,508 MW mark set in August 2023. On Wednesday,...
- 727 to 1: Abbott's Deadline Arrives and Nobody Has Decided Who Pays
Shave one megawatt off your demand at the system peak and Texas will save you money on transmission. How much money depends entirely on what kind of customer you are. For a commercial or industrial customer, the...
- 41 Gigawatts in Letters of Agreement: Washington Wires $3.26 Billion Into Texas
The Department of Energy closed a loan of up to $3.26 billion to AEP Texas on July 8. Buried in the announcement is a number that deserves more attention than the loan itself: AEP Texas says it has signed letters...
- 32 Plants, 287 Million Tons: Somebody Finally Added Up the Texas Gas Buildout
The Environmental Integrity Project published a report on July 1 that did something nobody in Texas had bothered to do: it counted the gas plants. Not the ones utilities are building for the grid — the ones being...
- Build Your Own Grid: Microsoft and Chevron Skip the Wires
Texas spent this week doing two things that look contradictory and aren't. On June 18, the Public Utility Commission approved ERCOT's "Batch Zero" process — the first real rulebook in the country for connecting the...
- The Sorting Begins: Texas Builds the Machinery to Tell Real Data Centers From Paper Ones
For two years the story in Texas has been the size of the number. The interconnection queue crossed 400 GW. The 2032 peak forecast hit 367,790 MW, more than four times the all-time record. Every week brought...
- 438 Gigawatts, and Who Gets to Say No
ERCOT spent this week doing two things at once that do not obviously fit together. On Tuesday it told everyone the grid will sail through a record summer. On Monday and Tuesday its board voted to ration access to...
- 238 Gigawatts on Paper, $100 Million in Federal Court
ERCOT's large-load interconnection queue closed May at roughly 238,000 megawatts, north of 70 percent of it data centers. On Wednesday, a developer in Hill County took $80 million of land, 1,235 megawatts of...
- Berkeley Lab Says U.S. Power Prices Are Flat. Your Texas Bill Is Not.
A team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory published a paper in the December 2025 issue of The Electricity Journal called "Factors influencing recent trends in retail electricity prices in the United States."...
- Hut 8 Books a $9.8 Billion Tenant, and the Texas Queue Tilts Back to Gas
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...
- Texas Builds a Second Power System. It Just Ran Out of Electricians.
Riot Platforms reported Q1 2026 earnings on April 30, and for the first time the data center hosting line — $33.2 million — was a real entry on the income statement instead of a footnote about future opportunity....
- The Forecast Nobody Believes: ERCOT Files 368 GW by 2032, Then Walks It Back
ERCOT filed its preliminary long-term load forecast with the Public Utility Commission on April 15, and the number on the front page was 367,790 megawatts of peak demand by 2032. That is roughly 4.3 times the...
- 410,000 Megawatts in Four Years: ERCOT Tells the Legislature the Queue Just Broke Reality
Four years. Four-hundred-and-ten-thousand megawatts. That was the number ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas dropped in front of the Texas House State Affairs Committee on Monday — a number so large it essentially concedes that...
- The Bill Comes Due: Texas Lawmakers Target $1 Billion in Data Center Tax Breaks as New Megaprojects Break Ground
Every week I sit here and tell you about the capital pouring into Texas energy infrastructure. Billions here, gigawatts there. This week is no different — Aligned Data Centers just broke ground on a 540 MW campus...
- $23 Billion in One Week: Microsoft-Chevron and NextEra Bet Big on Private Power in Texas
Two deals landed this week that, taken together, tell you exactly where the Texas power market is headed — and it's not through the interconnection queue.
- While Regulators Scramble, the Capital Doesn't Wait: A $14 Billion Week in Texas Energy
Last week I wrote about the communities pushing back — San Marcos, Lacy Lakeview, Fort Worth — places where the local math on water, roads, and tax abatements wasn't adding up. The resistance is real. But this...
- "Texas Has a Hyperscale Problem": Why Communities Are Turning on Big Tech Data Centers
Texas communities are done being polite about hyperscale data centers. And frankly, they've earned the right to be angry.
- The Buildout vs. the Backlash: Fermi's 17 GW Private Grid, $33B in Contested Transmission, and $780M in Fresh Capital
Texas energy infrastructure is moving in two directions at once this week — and if you're paying attention, both of them matter.
- "Inflection Point": 226 GW in the Queue, a 7.65 GW Permit, and the Week Texas Energy Got Real
Something broke loose in Texas energy this week. Not one story — five, all at once, all pointing the same direction. A 226 GW interconnection queue that's quadrupled in a year. A crypto miner sitting on 1.7 GW of...
- "226 Gigawatts in the Queue": Batteries Double, SMRs Get Real, and ERCOT Calls McKinsey
A year ago, ERCOT's large load interconnection queue stood at 63 gigawatts. Today it's 226 GW. That's not a typo and it's not a rounding error. It's the sound of every hyperscaler, crypto miner, and industrial...
- "We Are No Longer a Bitcoin Company" — And That's Just the Start of Texas Power's Wildest Week
On Thursday morning, Ben Gagnon stood up in front of investors and said the quiet part out loud: "We are no longer a Bitcoin company." His company, formerly Bitfarms, is now Keel Infrastructure — redomiciled...
- "We Are No Longer Just Studying This" — ERCOT Rewrites the Rules While Hyperscalers Keep Signing Checks
Last week, we told you ERCOT was stuck in a "study doom loop." This week, they're breaking out of it — and the implications for Texas data center development are massive.
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