AINEWS
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas will deliver a governor ordered December report on roughly 250–300 large and 157 medium sized 25–75 MW data center and crypto mining facilities — but already approved and self powered sites are not covered.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas told the Public Utility Commission of Texas on Thursday that the December audit of the state's data center boom will cover the slice the state can still measure: roughly 250 to 300 large energy consumers and 157 medium-sized facilities in the 25 to 75 megawatt (MW) range, the size band that catches both mid-tier data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations.
ERCOT confirmed the December deadline at a PUCT commission meeting, according to Texas Public Radio. The cohort, internally called "Batch Zero," is the first wave of large industrial power users that asked to connect to the ERCOT grid, which manages about 90% of the state's electric load. The 157 medium-sized facilities, identified by ERCOT as of April, sit in the 25 to 75 MW range.
The carve-outs are large. Governor Greg Abbott's June directive paused new data center approvals, but data centers that had already secured approval to connect to the grid, facilities that generate their own power behind the meter, and any load outside the ERCOT footprint, which covers roughly 90% of the state's electric demand, were not paused, as the Texas Tribune and Houston Public Media both reported. A Jones Day analysis read the same scope as a statewide audit that stops short of a ban.
Abbott's June order told the Public Utility Commission to ensure new data center interconnections lower residential rates and that data centers pay for the transmission their loads require, as Houston Public Media reported. The audit is being done after the approvals, not before. The December report is the state's first real accounting of the buildout it has already approved.
The December report will count a meaningful share of the on-the-ground footprint and leave the rest to other agencies, self-reporting, and guesswork. Readers who treat the Batch Zero numbers as a tally of Texas's full data center load will undercount the buildout. Readers who treat them as the slice of the buildout that has not yet locked in grid commitments will be closer to the truth.
The audit covers more than power use. Per the Abbott directive, ERCOT and the PUCT are collecting energy use, water use, government assistance and tax incentives, ownership structure, and what the agencies call "community impact information." That last category is what Seely's description of the workload as a "technology and control" challenge — and incentive paperwork — do not talk to each other. TPR reported that description.
ERCOT is already planning 765 kilovolt (kV) backbone lines to move power from West Texas wind and solar toward the load centers where data centers cluster, as the Texas Tribune reported in August. The December audit gives PUCT and the legislature the data. The cost-allocation rules from Abbott's June letter are what they have to enforce next.
ERCOT and commission staff are expected to walk through the data they have collected at the PUCT's November open meeting. The deadline ERCOT named on Thursday is the one legislators, local officials, and ratepayers can plan around. The carve-outs are why the December numbers will be a floor on the footprint, not a ceiling.