Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released the response from the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) to his directive to show what steps are being taken to protect ratepayers from the costs of data center expansion.<\/p>\n
On June 10, Abbott directed PUCT to make data centers pay for the electric infrastructure they need, so Texas families are not forced to foot the bill, to ensure that connecting data centers actually lowers residential electric bills, and to work with ERCOT to take more steps to protect residential ratepayers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI directed the Public Utility Commission and ERCOT to protect Texans from the costs of data center expansion and they are putting that direction into action,\u201d Abbott said. \u201cResidential ratepayers will not foot the bill for this industry\u2019s growth. These actions keep electric bills affordable and protect the water our communities need.\u201d<\/p>\n
The agencies said they were now requiring data centers to pay for transmission infrastructure built to serve them and to also contribute toward meaningfully reducing residential electric bills. Additionally, the agencies are adopting rules to prevent large data centers from diverting power away from the ERCOT grid, and ensuring power is prioritized for Texas families and communities; and implementing a new interconnection screening process to prevent data centers from overburdening the grid. Abbott said the actions are part of new, sweeping changes to how data centers pay for the infrastructure needed to serve them, as a way to ensure those costs are not passed on to ratepayers.<\/p>\n
PUCT and ERCOT also recommended legislative changes for the upcoming legislative session that included expanding the Lone Star Infrastructure Protection Act to cover large data center so that foreign actors cannot use them to threaten the Texas grid, clarifying the agencies\u2019 authority; establishing additional reliability requirements that data centers must comply with; and requiring data centers to register with PUCT and ERCOT so the state has accurate information about their water and electricity options.<\/p>\n
Abbott said he would work with the legislature to codify the protections and ensure data centers do not cost Texas ratepayers more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas Gov. Greg Abbott released the response from the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":390571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-390570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}