Process is Killing Texas Data Center Projects
From Energy Capital Podcast by Doug Lewin
May 6, 2026 · 42 min
About this episode
This episode discusses the challenges in the Texas data center market, focusing on the contract processes that delay project completion.
As the data center buildout in Texas accelerates, the public conversation has fixated on generation, interconnection queues, and gigawatts. But the firms actually structuring these deals see a different problem entirely: process. In this episode, Joshua Rhodes speaks with Maura Yates, chief executive of Mothership Energy. Mothership is one of the most active retail electricity providers in ERCOT’s large-load market, managing more than three gigawatts of large load and writing more than 39 distinct data center contract templates to handle the variation across deals. Yates says the technology to power data centers exists. The bottleneck for data center completion is the time it takes to sign contracts for electricity service and the time it takes to connect them to the grid. As Texas debates SB6 implementation, co-location rules, and demand-side management, that distinction is shaping which projects get built and when. Joshua and Maura discuss topics including: * Why Mothership has written more than 39 distinct data center contract templates. * The difference between behind-the-meter, front-of-meter, and co-location deals. * What the Crusoe Goodnight data center PUC ruling means…
People in this episode
Host: Doug Lewin
Guest: Maura Yates
Topics covered
- data centers
- electricity contracts
- Texas energy policy
- ERCOT
- contract templates
- co-location
- demand-side management
Keywords
- data center
- electricity service
- contract templates
- ERCOT
- Texas
- co-location
- SB6
- demand-side management
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Mothership Energy, ERCOT, Crusoe
Places: Texas
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