Governor Abbott’s August 3, 2026 letter to the PUCT and ERCOT put the number at “approximately 474 gigawatts of requests to connect to the Texas grid,” more than five times ERCOT’s 85,508 MW peak record, about 90% of it data centers. ERCOT’s own status table tells the other half: as of March 26, 2026, 410.6 GW requested, 9.0 GW approved to energize, 5.8 GW energized. About 2% of what Texas has been asked for has permission to draw power, and about 1.4% draws it. This piece walks the funnel by status, by utility and by dollar of collateral, then the pause and what the December audit cuts.
Source: ERCOT, Large Load Interconnection Requests (Dec 2025, Apr 2026, Jun 2026); Office of the Governor letter, Aug 3 2026; via Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table
The queue was 63 GW at the end of 2024, 225.8 GW on November 18, 2025, 410.6 GW on March 26, 2026, 438 GW when the PUCT approved Batch Zero on June 18, and 474 GW when the Governor wrote his letter. The data center share went from 73% to 87% to about 90%. ERCOT’s intake chart shows why: 198 requests arrived in Q1 2026 alone, almost all 750 MW or larger, against 53 in total before 2023. The Large-Load Cost Table, launched in October 2025, carries the ERCOT queue as one of its fifteen market legs; the 15-market comparison put Texas last on security and near the top on energization year for the same reason.
The Funnel in ERCOT’s Own Table
Slide 3 of ERCOT’s April 1, 2026 Senate deck is the whole story in six rows: of 410,618 MW requested through 2030, 293,651 MW (72%) had no studies submitted, 3,241 MW was approved to energize but not operating, and 5,778 MW was observed energized.
Source: ERCOT, Large Load Interconnection Requests, board deck Dec 2025 and Senate Business and Commerce deck Apr 1 2026; via Open Factory Large-Load Cost Table
From November 18, 2025 to March 26, 2026 the no-studies row grew 165 GW while observed energized grew 476 MW. Energized capacity has grown about 1 GW a year since 2022 (2,634 MW in 2022, 4,834 MW by 2024, 5,778 MW by March 2026) while requests grew 350 GW in sixteen months. Approved-to-energize capacity is the bottom two rows, 9,019 MW: 2.2% of the March queue, 1.9% of the Governor’s 474 GW. ERCOT’s planners discount further: its 2025 long-term forecast found average peak consumption per data center site was 49.8% of the requested MW, 55.4% of officer-letter loads promised for 2024 had energized, and projects ran 180 days late. Those factors are the Texas realization default in the Large-Load Interconnection Cost tool. The generation side of the same grid clears at ten times the rate: Berkeley Lab’s Queued Up 2025 counts 63.5 GW of ERCOT generation filed in 2000 to 2019 that reached operation against 286 GW filed, 22%. A load queue that clears at 1 to 2% is a survey of intent with a $100,000 entry fee.
Oncor’s 298 GW
Oncor told the SEC on August 6, 2026 that its transmission-level large commercial and industrial queue held 737 requests: “approximately 282 gigawatts from data centers and over 16 gigawatts of load from various other industrial sectors,” about 298 GW, up from 289 GW at Q1 per the Sempra call as reported by Utility Dive. ERCOT’s by-TSP chart, read to within 2 GW, shows Oncor at about 192 GW of the 410.6 GW tracked in March, roughly 47%. The 106 GW gap is requests Oncor holds that were not yet submitted to ERCOT, which a January LLWG presentation complained about: “Oncor did not submit many of their loads in the process.”
Source: ERCOT, Large Load Interconnection Requests by TSP, Apr 1 2026 deck (values read from chart); Oncor 8-K, Aug 6 2026
After Oncor at ~192 GW come AEP Texas at ~40 GW, LCRA TSC at ~32 GW, WETT and CTT at ~24 GW each, CenterPoint at ~23 GW and Lonestar at ~20 GW; seven other TSPs share about 50 GW. The buyer’s numbers are Oncor’s next ones: of its 298 GW, approximately 44 GW is expected to be eligible for Batch Zero, 27 GW as base load and 17 GW as studied load, and that 44 GW includes about 8 GW of existing interconnected load still ramping to its authorized capacity. Oncor holds about $2 billion of collateral against those projects, roughly $45,000 per MW. CenterPoint’s numbers rhyme: 17 GW submitted, 14 GW expected eligible (10 GW base, 4 GW studied), backed by about $900 million of customer cash and deposits, about $64,000 per MW, on a Houston system whose peak is 21 GW. The Large-Load Cost Table carries both utilities’ collateral-per-MW beside Dominion’s, AEP Ohio’s and Georgia Power’s.
Batch Zero and the $50,000 Per Megawatt
Batch Zero is ERCOT’s answer to a process built for 40 to 50 large loads at a time. PGRR145 and NPRR1325 replace the one-at-a-time study with one system-wide study of every 75 MW-plus request that meets maturity criteria. The Board approved it June 2, 2026, the PUCT June 18, effective July 11. Developers filed Form X (bring your own generation) or Form W (accept curtailment) by July 10, classification as base, studied or excluded load was due August 7, the security commitment deadline is June 2027, the transmission plan lands fall 2027 and Batch 1 opens summer 2027. The Large-Load Policy Tracker holds each date with its filing.
The cash is set by a different document. The PUCT’s proposed 16 TAC 25.194 (Project 58481, published March 12, 2026, the interconnection-standards leg of the SB6 roadmap in Project 58317) asks a 75 MW-plus load for a $100,000 study fee (75 to 250 MW) or $300,000 (above 250 MW), $50,000 per MW of security at the intermediate agreement, a second $50,000 per MW that becomes a non-refundable fee at the interconnection agreement, 100% CIAC for every radial line and substation, a site lease running five years past the contracted peak date, and disclosure of every duplicate request by the same company or affiliate anywhere in Texas. Withdraw, or miss a milestone by six months, and 80% of the security goes to the utility’s rate base; run five years at contracted demand and the balance comes back.
Source: Open Factory Large-Load Interconnection Cost (compiled from PUCT Project 58481, proposed 16 TAC 25.194, Mar 12 2026; ERCOT Apr 1 2026 deck)
A 75 MW load posts $7.6 million before energization, 100 MW posts $10.1 million, 250 MW posts $25.1 million, 500 MW posts $50.3 million and a 1 GW campus posts $100.3 million, all before a dollar of CIAC. A 50 MW plant posts nothing, because the rule starts at 75 MW, and a 74 MW plant that later adds 10 MW crosses the line and owes the full schedule. The Large-Load Interconnection Cost tool prices both sides of that threshold. Under Texas Government Code 2001.027 a proposed rule is withdrawn if not adopted within six months, so adoption or re-proposal is due by September 12, 2026.
Abbott’s Pause and the December Audit
The Governor’s letter directed the PUCT and ERCOT to “conduct a comprehensive verification and audit of all data centers advancing through ERCOT’s interconnection process before any additional data centers are approved to move forward,” collecting each project’s tax incentives, on-site generation, water, community mitigation and ownership. The trigger he named was the PUCT’s water-and-power survey, to which 28 of 377 notified companies responded. ERCOT issued a market notice the same day pausing the Batch Zero study and pausing approvals to energize for data centers and crypto facilities of 75 MW or more; medium loads of 25 to 74.9 MW and non-data-center large loads continue to energize.
The timeline came at the August 20 PUCT open meeting: RFIs to TSPs and developers from late August through November, site inspections for base loads energizing before April 1, 2027, a verification report filed December 10, a commission open meeting December 17. About 250 to 300 projects totaling roughly 200 GW are in scope. Two numbers from the same deck size the near-term pipeline: 17 large loads with 6,608 MW of five-year peak demand have cleared every gate except approval to energize, and of 290 dynamic models submitted, 18% passed first review. The April 9, 2027 study deadline will slip; ERCOT said so in writing. BNEF, as reported by Utility Dive, puts 49.8 GW under the pause, 20% of the US pipeline, and expects 1.2 GW of ERCOT data center additions through Q1 2027 and 8.25 GW more through 2030, a total above 17 GW.
The physical constraint sits under the political one. TSP-reported 2030 load was 208 GW in April against ERCOT’s adjusted 138 GW; Ascend Analytics, via Utility Dive, models 120 GW at a 55.4% success rate and names gas turbines, EPC capacity and high-voltage gear as the limits. We track the same limits: turbine slots gone through 2029 in the slot economy, power transformers at 128 to 160 weeks in the Lead-Time Monitor, 90 GW behind the meter announced against 2 GW running. A Batch Zero allocation is worth nothing without the GSU; the Lead-Time-Adjusted Schedule puts both dates on one page.
What to Do Monday
If you are under 75 MW, stay there on paper until the rule is adopted, and size the service so a 10 MW addition does not cross the line; the Transformer Sizing and Cost tool sizes a substation for 74 MW firm with a spare bay. If you are above 75 MW and not in Batch Zero, you are in Batch 1, applications summer 2027, with no data center approval to energize before December 17 at the earliest; put that date in the schedule and price a bridge with the Genset TCO and the recips vs turbines vs fuel cells comparison. If you buy capacity rather than build it, the scarce asset in Texas is an energized interconnection, and its owners are mostly bitcoin miners. Behind the paywall: the seven owners of the energized and approved gigawatts, named from their own filings, what each did differently, and our estimate that the December audit leaves ~90 to 110 GW of the ~200 GW under review standing, with ~20 to 30 GW drawing power by 2030. The Large-Load Cost Table carries the per-site rows.