6MAY

Texas queue swells to 438 GW

3 min read

13:52UTC

Texas approved its first formal large-load study process on 18 June, even as ERCOT's connection queue climbed to 438 GW, about 90% of it data centres. The plan to clear it is not due until autumn 2027.

← Back to Maine veto, Seattle freeze, $725bn capex Jump to analysis ↓

IndustryDeveloping

Key takeaway

ERCOT's queue has nearly doubled to 438 GW while the plan to clear it runs to autumn 2027.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved the state's first formal Batch Zero large-load study process on 18 June, the cohort method ERCOT will use to work through its connection requests ¹. ERCOT, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which runs about 90% of the state grid, reported its large-load queue at 438 GW (gigawatts), roughly 90% of it data centres.

The queue climbed from 410 GW in April in about six weeks, and Texas first tried to clear it when it stood at 225 GW . It has nearly doubled since. ERCOT's final transmission plan is not due until autumn 2027, with the next application round, Batch 1, opening in summer 2027.

Intake runs at tens of gigawatts a quarter while the study meant to clear it takes years, so the backlog grows faster than any single cohort can be processed. A connection cleared through Batch Zero still cannot switch on without the transformers to serve it, and those are running years behind for new grid links. A transformer ordered today arrives after both the FERC show-cause responses and the Batch Zero plan are already on the table.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) is the company that operates the electricity grid for about 90% of Texas. When a company wants to connect a new power user, like a data centre, to the Texas grid, it has to apply for a connection and join a queue. ERCOT then studies whether the local grid can handle the extra load without causing problems for existing customers. That queue has now reached 438 GW, meaning companies have applied to connect 438 GW of new electricity demand, roughly five times Texas's actual peak electricity use of about 85 GW. About 90% of those applications are from data centres. On 18 June, Texas approved the first formal batch process to work through the queue, called Batch Zero. But the final plan is not due until autumn 2027, and the next round of applications does not open until summer 2027, meaning new data centres approved through this process will not have confirmed grid connections for at least two more years.

What could happen next?

Consequence
ERCOT's Batch Zero timeline locks the Texas data-centre grid-connection question to 2027-28, a 12-18 month gap that will be filled by BTM generation deals like Project Kilby rather than utility connections.
Risk
If queue growth continues at the 28 GW per two-month pace observed between April and June 2026, the queue will exceed 600 GW before Batch Zero's autumn 2027 plan is delivered, making any single batch process insufficient.

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: California's interconnection queue managed by CAISO hit 400 GW by 2023, driven by solar and storage applications. CAISO adopted a cluster study approach (effectively a Batch process) in 2022 under FERC Order 2023, clearing roughly 150 GW of applications through deposit requirements and viability screens over two years. Texas is attempting the same mechanism three years later at a similar headline queue volume.

Counter-parallel: PJM's interconnection reform process, launched in 2022 after its queue exceeded 200 GW, took two years to implement a deposit-backed cluster process and still had not cleared the backlog by mid-2026. The counter-lesson from PJM is that clearing the existing queue does not prevent new applications from arriving faster than studies complete.

At 438 GW of queued applications, ERCOT's transmission upgrade costs to serve even a fraction of that load run into hundreds of billions of dollars. Texas's legislature has authorised $7.2bn in transmission bonds since 2023, a figure that covers roughly 20-30 GW of new large-load connections at an estimated $30-40 per kW transmission upgrade cost.

Operators that want certainty before autumn 2027 are building captive BTM generation rather than waiting for grid confirmation. Project Kilby targets first power in 2028, precisely when the Batch Zero transmission plan will be finalised. Owning the generator converts a grid-plan dependency into an energy-procurement decision.

Consensus view: Wood Mackenzie's North American power markets team has tracked ERCOT's queue growth and noted that Batch Zero's study process will disqualify a significant portion of applicants at the screening stage, since ERCOT requires firm financial deposits and demonstrated site control that speculative queue positions lack.

The real queue, after deposit-backed positions are separated from speculative placeholders, is estimated by Wood Mackenzie to be 30-40% of the headline 438 GW figure.

Counter-view: Rystad Energy's upstream power analysts have argued that the queue's speculative component does not reduce the transmission-planning burden, because ERCOT must model each application to determine which ones to clear. At 438 GW, the study volume itself is the bottleneck: ERCOT's transmission planning staff cannot run contingency studies for that many applications concurrently, making the autumn 2027 final-plan deadline optimistic regardless of deposit attrition.

Key tension: Whether ERCOT's Batch Zero deposit requirement will clear the queue to a manageable volume before the autumn 2027 transmission plan, or whether the queue will continue to grow faster than studies can clear it, as it has done since Texas first tried to clear it at 225 GW .

Sources:Utility Dive

Mentions:Oregon Public Utility Commission →Texas →California →Rystad Energy →Wood Mackenzie →CAISO →FERC →PJM Interconnection →Batch Zero →large-load interconnection queue →ERCOT →Public Utility Commission of Texas →

First Reported In

Update #8 · Data centres build their own power plants

Utility Dive· 28 Jun 2026

Read original →

Causes and effects

Caused by

Texas grid queue hits 410 GW

ERCOT's queue grew from 410 GW in April to 438 GW by June, the 28 GW increase that triggered the Batch Zero approval

Occurred 9 Apr 2026

Read story →

ERCOT large-load queue passes 225 GW

Texas first tried to clear this queue when it stood at 225 GW; it has nearly doubled since

Occurred 1 Apr 2026

Read story →

This Event

Texas queue swells to 438 GW

Texas is trying to process a connection queue that grows by tens of gigawatts a quarter with a study that takes years, so the backlog widens faster than any cohort can clear.

Different Perspectives

Global hyperscale operators

Operators are still filing gigawatt-scale campuses and Meta is proceeding with its $10bn Lebanon, Indiana site despite the county-level bans nearby, betting Q2 capex outruns the patchwork of restrictions. Industry framing casts New York's freeze, Oregon's surcharge and Indiana's bans as taxes and levies that push build-out toward faster-permitting jurisdictions such as India and the Gulf.

EirGrid

EirGrid set a 900 MW instantaneous demand-loss ceiling because a single voltage dip can trip many data centres onto backup power at once, risking imbalance above 1,150 MW. It wrote the limit into a standing procedure rather than waiting for an emergency to force one.

US host communities and ratepayers

Prince William residents backed the 8-0 denial of Dulles South over the Occoquan watershed, drinking water for eight million people, while Oregon's approved tariff cuts residential bills 1.3% by charging large loads 29% more. Their position: consent and cost-attribution belong in law, not left to a developer's or a utility's discretion.

Hassan Allam Digital Infrastructure

Hassan Allam Digital Infrastructure, an Egyptian conglomerate rather than a foreign hyperscaler, reportedly secured a domestic hyperscale licence with a $400m first phase, per single-source reporting still to be verified. It reads as home-grown sovereign compute ambition, building national capacity rather than importing a US or Gulf operator's campus.

Damac Digital

Damac Digital keeps building toward roughly 6,000 megawatts of hyperscale capacity across 13 countries while Virginia taxes power and New York weighs a freeze. Every dollar or month of delay a US state adds is capacity a Gulf developer can site somewhere with faster permitting and no equivalent levy.

Acequia communities, Santa Fe County

Santa Fe County commissioners voted unanimously on 2 July to freeze any data centre over one megawatt, citing the acequia irrigation commons that has shared scarce water since Spanish colonial rule. They expect the low threshold to draw the same Fifth Amendment challenge RCM Hill brought against Hill County, Texas.