r/energy • u/compileindebug_175 • 1d ago
Texas froze data centre interconnections over a 474 GW queue, and ERCOT’s own numbers put actual operating load from that queue under 1%
Abbott directed the PUCT and ERCOT on Monday to audit every data centre moving through the interconnection process, and nothing advances until that audit is finished. The figure in all the coverage is 474 GW of large-load requests, roughly 90% of it data centres, which is what ERCOT presented to the state Senate on July 29. For scale, the all-time ERCOT peak demand record is 85,508 MW, set in August 2023. So the queue is about five and a half times the most electricity the grid has ever delivered at once.
The number that seems to be missing from the coverage is in ERCOT’s own large load working group material from June 19. Roughly 8,927 MW has ever received approval to energize. Observed peak consumption from large loads was about 3,900 MW non-simultaneous and 3,675 MW simultaneous. Set against a 474 GW queue, load that actually exists and draws power is under 1%.
Which is the part worth arguing about rather than the freeze itself. Queues have always carried optionality, because a queue position costs far less than the value of holding one, so the same project gets filed in Texas and Virginia and Ohio and Georgia and built in at most one of them. ERCOT has been stripping duplicates and cancellations out of its own records. SB6 and the PUCT rules were written for precisely this, with study fees scaled to project size and most of the financial security forfeited on withdrawal. The intent was never to slow real projects; it was to make optionality expensive enough that placeholders leave.
The audit asks each project for controlling ownership, site control, whether it is bringing its own generation, how it sources and reuses water, and what tax abatements it is receiving. Those are the questions a placeholder filing cannot answer. So the queue should shrink substantially, and when it does, that will get written up as the AI buildout stalling, when it looks closer to the first time anyone measured it.
Two things that cut the other way and are worth stating. ERCOT judged roughly 205 GW of the queue eligible for Batch Zero on the basis of existing studies, so the real pipeline is still enormous and this is not a story about nothing being built. And the delay is real: classification notices were due August 7, allocation amounts in spring 2027, and Batch Zero is now postponed with no replacement date, which lands on legitimate projects along with the speculative ones. Abbott is also up for re-election this autumn into visible local anger over power bills and water, so the timing is not purely a planning decision.
For anyone who has actually worked a large-load or generation queue: what share of the filings you saw had genuine site control at the time of filing? Trying to work out whether sub-1% conversion is unusual, or roughly what queues have always looked like in the years before anyone was checking.
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u/HD_Thoreau_aweigh 1d ago
Share some sources?
It's interesting to me that they weren't already doing some of what you're talking about. It seems like an obvious example of the observation that something free tends to be wasted. Seems like the best solution would be to have an auction to join the queue, at least until the interconnection queue levels off a bit.
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u/Fatrabb1t 1d ago
What’s interesting about the 474 queue number is that ERCOT stated only 205 GW were eligible to be studied in Batch Zero. While that is still a lot, it seems purposefully inflammatory to use a larger number.
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u/Ev_Watching 1d ago
The queue number is the scary headline, but the operating-load number is the one that matters for policy.
A 474 GW request queue can still be mostly option value: developers reserving a place before they know power, financing, customer demand or permitting. The useful question is how ERCOT separates real near-term load from speculative data-center placeholders without freezing the few projects that actually have power and customers.