Texas Governor Greg Abbott has ordered an audit of every data center project sitting in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas interconnection queue, a move that has already pushed the grid operator to delay a key transmission planning review. In a letter to ERCOT and state regulators, Abbott said interconnection requests now total about 474 gigawatts, more than five times the state's record peak electricity demand, and that roughly 90 percent of the new power requests come from data centers.
ERCOT responded by postponing its "Batch Zero" review, the first group of projects moving through the state's new large-load interconnection process, and said it would ask the Public Utility Commission of Texas for a good-cause exemption to the timeline at an upcoming meeting. The audit will examine how much power and water each data center plans to draw from the grid versus generating or sourcing on its own, and whether projects are paying their own way or relying on state and local financial incentives. Abbott said any project that fails the verification process "must be denied."
The pause follows a similar move in New York, which halted new data center approvals for up to a year in July while it develops new rules. The Data Center Coalition, an industry trade group, said it hopes the audit will separate serious, committed investors from speculative projects. Texas ranks second nationally in data center development behind Virginia, and industry forecasts had expected the state to eventually take the top spot. Attorneys tracking the pause say power generation and infrastructure investors financing transmission and generation tied to large-load projects should reassess timelines while the suspension is in effect.
Source: Utility Dive - https://www.utilitydive.com/news/texas-hits-pause-data-center-interconnections/827046/