The Public Utility Commission of Texas on Thursday voted to approve the change to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas’ interconnection process.
Leaders of both agencies have said the new process will allow ERCOT to more effectively manage the rapid growth in large electric users, like data centers, crypto miners and industrial facilities, seeking to connect to the grid while ensuring reliability for Texas residents.
PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson said Texas is leading the nation in developing innovative solutions for the soaring electricity demand from data centers and other large power users.
“We are showing it is entirely possible to protect consumers first and encourage economic development, so our state continues to thrive,” Gleeson said. “This marks another trailblazing step forward in building Texas’ grid of the future, while putting reliability and the concerns of Texas rate payers first.”
The change comes as a record number of these large electric users are clamoring to join ERCOT’s system and it’s been difficult to determine how many of the projects are legitimate. ERCOT’s longterm load forecast ballooned this year, predicting electricity demand to as much as quadruple by 2032 because of new data centers, though grid officials have said those predictions are likely inflated.
Under the new batch study process, ERCOT will group projects together to speed up the evaluation process, remove speculative projects and identify what new transmission infrastructure may be required.
According to the PUC, the process will give greater regulatory certainty to developers, which will in turn encourage further economic growth in Texas.
As the number of power-hungry users join the grid, residential consumers have raised flags about not only reliability of the power grid but needing to be shielded from shouldering the costs of these facilities.
ERCOT officials said “batch zero” will be transitional, requiring a narrower focus with the included projects being mature and exhibited “more project readiness.”
Most data centers will not be selected in this first group, but those projects will be eligible for the next round — aka batch one — or subsequent ones.
Projects in later batches could face years of delays as they wait for transmission to be built to get all the power they’re asking for, and rules for subsequent batches likely won’t be set until next year.
This reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.