UT Austin study<\/a> found that as of September 2025, there were 484 data centers planned, under construction, or operating in Texas.<\/p>\n“To supply that kind of demand growth, we are going to have to increase the capacity throughout the electricity value chain, and that starts with generation. We are going to have to see rapid growth in generation,” UH professor Greg Bean said.<\/p>\n
The UH study said aging infrastructure and a lengthy regulation process stand in the way of expanding the electricity grid to meet the growing demand.<\/p>\n
The study states that: “Natural gas, solar, and batteries are expected to meet the increased demand in the short and medium term.”<\/p>\n
As for those concerned, the rise in demand could make the electricity grid unreliable or cause prices to spike. Bean weighed in on that.<\/p>\n
“That’s clearly a concern of retail customers. I do think most of the regulatory agencies around the country are addressing that specifically by setting up regulatory processes to ensure new customers like data centers do not affect the availability of and price of electricity,” Bean said.<\/p>\n
As for whether electricity demand will continue to spike or slow beyond 2030, Bean said he expects the rise to continue.<\/p>\n
“I suspect that demand will continue to grow, but I also think that data center capacity may not grow as rapidly and data centers are likely to become more energy efficient,” he said. “So I don’t think this next five-year growth is likely to be replicated in the long term.”<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — University of Houston researchers laid out the reasons why electricity demand could spike in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":418803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[145871,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-418802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-145871","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418802","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=418802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/418802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/418803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=418802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=418802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=418802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}