How Texas decides which data centers to connect

About this episode

The episode discusses ERCOT's new screening process for connecting large data centers to the Texas grid.

ERCOT now has roughly 445 gigawatts of large loads asking to connect to the Texas grid, a figure so large that Joshua Rhodes says it might as well be infinite, because the system cannot physically build for all of it. To sort real projects from speculative ones, ERCOT is launching a new screening process called batch zero, and stakeholders voted to advance it at last week’s Technical Advisory Committee meeting. On this episode, Rhodes walks through the mechanics with Tiffany Wu, an energy markets and regulatory consultant at McAdams Energy Group and a former adviser to Public Utility Commissioner Will McAdams. The mechanism traces back to SB6, the 2025 law that standardized how large loads connect to the grid and set a 75-megawatt threshold for what counts as a large load. Wu describes a sequence built to thin the field at each step. ERCOT screens which projects qualify and studies what transmission they would require, then puts the survivors through a financial gate that filters out developers unwilling to commit real capital before final studies on whatever clears. The first batch is not expected to finish until late 2027. Running alongside the batch process is a fight over who…

People in this episode

Host: Doug Lewin

Guests: Joshua Rhodes, Tiffany Wu

Topics covered

• data centers
• Texas grid
• ERCOT
• energy regulation
• large loads
• transmission costs

Keywords

• ERCOT
• data centers
• Texas grid
• energy regulation
• large loads
• transmission costs
• SB6
• Technical Advisory Committee

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: ERCOT, McAdams Energy Group, Public Utility Commission

Places: Texas

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