Texas data center audit targets ERCOT's 474 GW queue
Governor Greg Abbott ordered a Texas data center audit on August 3, 2026, directing the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to check every data center in a large-load interconnection queue that has reached 474 GW, about 90% of it data centers. Projects that do not disclose ownership, financing, water use and community impact could be denied grid access. For developers, a request for grid power now has to be backed by disclosure and money.
Why ERCOT's queue grew far beyond the grid it serves
ERCOT was tracking approximately 474.7 GW of large-load interconnection requests as of June 2026, and 420.8 GW of that, or 90.2%, was identified as data centers. ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas presented those figures to the Texas Senate on July 29, 2026.
Abbott compared the queue with the grid's own record. ERCOT set an all-time hourly peak of 91,089 MW on July 22, 2026, and the queue is more than five times that peak. That ratio is the gap between the power companies ask for and the most power the Texas grid has ever delivered at once.
"That unprecedented load growth could endanger the reliability and stability of the Texas electric grid." — Greg Abbott, in his letter to the PUCT and ERCOT
What the August 3 order asks data centers to disclose
The letter went to PUCT Chairman Thomas Gleeson and to Vegas. It directs both agencies to verify and audit every data center project before it can advance through the interconnection process. Each project must disclose whether it relies on public financial assistance or tax incentives, its projected power consumption, its plans for on-site generation, its water usage and cooling technology, and its controls for community impacts such as noise and light. Developers must also give full ownership and controlling interest details.
Abbott tied the audit to existing law. Some data centers, he wrote, failed to comply with the PUC's survey of water and power usage under the General Appropriations Act. "Any project that fails to comply with the requirements set forth by the PUCT and ERCOT, and by state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid," he said.
How SB 6 and the batch study screen large loads
The audit sits on top of Senate Bill 6, which Abbott signed in June 2025 and which took effect on June 20, 2025. It sets interconnection standards for loads of 75 MW or more. Each applicant must disclose whether it is pursuing substantially similar requests elsewhere in Texas, disclose on-site backup generation able to serve at least 50% of its demand, and show financial commitments and site control before ERCOT studies the project. The PUCT must implement the law by Dec. 31, 2026.
On June 18, the PUCT approved ERCOT's Batch Study framework. It groups qualified projects of 75 MW and above into one interconnection study and required each applicant to post financial security of $50,000/MW by July 10, 2026, to stay eligible. Each qualified project is to receive an annual megawatt allocation from 2028 through 2032, its interconnection and upgrade costs, and a transmission plan.
What the queue numbers show so far
Only part of the queue qualifies for the first study. A preliminary ERCOT overview found approximately 205 GW of requests eligible for the first round, called Batch Zero, based on existing studies: 65 GW as base load, 114 GW as allocated load and 25 GW awaiting a decision. That is well under half of the 474.7 GW in the queue.
ERCOT plans to issue classifications by Aug. 7, settle disputes and data corrections by Sept. 1, and start the Batch Zero study no later than Sept. 2. Results are due April 9, 2027, and interconnection agreements by June 8, 2027. Projects that cannot post security move to a later round, Batch One. POWER also reported a BNEF warning that the audit could delay 49.8 GW of data center load and cost projects up to $15 billion; that is a forecast, not a measured result.
What it changes for companies requesting grid power
For a data center developer in Texas, a grid request is no longer a cheap placeholder. Duplicate requests must be disclosed, every megawatt in the batch study carries a cash deposit, and missing paperwork can cost a project its connection. The audit is Abbott's second intervention in less than two months. On June 10, 2026, he directed the agencies to make data centers pay all of their electric infrastructure costs so that residential ratepayers are not burdened by them.
He also pledged to ask the legislature to require data centers to add to Texas' electric capacity rather than only to its demand, to report electricity and water usage every year, and to use water-efficient cooling such as closed-loop systems in new builds.
Questions and answers
What does the audit require from data center projects?
Each project must disclose its ownership and controlling interests, any public financial assistance or tax incentives, projected power use, on-site generation plans, water use, cooling technology and measures for noise and light. The PUCT and ERCOT must verify it before the project advances.
How large is ERCOT's large-load interconnection queue?
About 474.7 GW as of June 2026, with 420.8 GW, or 90.2%, from data centers. That is more than five times ERCOT's record peak of 91,089 MW.
What happens to projects that fail the audit?
Abbott said any project that fails to meet the PUCT, ERCOT and state law requirements must be denied connection to the Texas grid.
MOZGII view
How we would build it
A queue that is five times the grid's record peak is mostly a data problem, so the first thing we would build is a request registry that the grid operator can trust. Each entry would carry the owner and controlling interest, the site, the requested megawatts by year, the deposit posted and any similar request filed elsewhere in Texas. Matching those fields across filings would expose duplicate requests that today look like separate demand.
We would add a document check on top of the registry. A language model would read each disclosure package, pull out the required fields and mark what is missing or inconsistent, such as a water plan that does not match the cooling technology. PUCT and ERCOT staff would make every decision on a project; the model would only sort the pile and show its reasons.
The weak point is ownership. Projects sit behind layers of companies, and one developer can file the same load under several names. We would compare addresses, engineering firms and financing parties, and send likely matches to a person for review rather than merge them automatically.
The one metric we would watch is the share of requested megawatts backed by a deposit and a complete disclosure. Next, we would publish that share by region so planners and developers could see how much of the queue is real load.
Sources
Where the facts in this story come from.