On June 10, 2026, Governor Greg Abbott directed PUC and ERCOT to require data centers seeking to interconnect to the ERCOT grid to fully fund the costs of electric infrastructure needed to serve their operations and prevent costs from being passed onto residential taxpayers. On July 17, 2026, PUC and ERCOT responded to the directive and announced the agencies the following actions:
- Large load interconnection standards to ensure only committed, financially secure projects that support grid reliability could move forward
- Revised transmission cost allocation methodologies to ensure costs are aligned with investment and would not burden residential and small business ratepayers
- New ERCOT criteria for large load growth and transmission
- New projects will be implemented via the recently-piloted system-wide “batch study” process with rules revisions intended to reduce residential electric bills; the first batch, “Batch Zero,” was approved on June 18, 2026
- Large consumers of electricity will pay direct interconnection costs up front and pay transmission charges as soon as capacity becomes available
- Revise wholesale transmission cost charges for large loads and how utilities in competitive choice areas assess charges to customers; PUC expects to make a final decision on rulemaking for the item in December 2026
On August 3, 2026, Governor Abbott announced a verification and audit of data center projects interconnecting to the ERCOT grid for compliance with PUC and ERCOT’s new standards. See below for a list of press releases announcing the data centers that have committed to comply with the new standards:
- August 18 – Data Center Coalition
- August 18 – Riot Platforms and Comanche Circle Data Center
- August 18 – Powerhouse Data Centers, CoreWeave and Emergent Data Centers
- August 18 – Bitdeer, CyrusOne, Ionic, Digital and HIF
- August 17 – New Era Energy & Digital, Switch And Hanwha
- August 17 – Prologis, Ecolab And Crusoe
- August 14 – Stack Infrastructure, Anthropic and Night peak Energy
- August 14 – Amazon, Lancium and Cipher Digital
- August 13 – Galaxy, Compass Datacenters and Montera Infrastructure
- August 13 – Microsoft, Hut 8 and Equinix
- August 12 – Core Scientific, Vantage Data Centers and SB Energy
- August 12 – Google, Rowan and Clean Spark
- August 11 – Oracle
- August 10 – Open AI
- August 10 – Meta
- August 7 – Skybox, Digital Realty, Mara
- August 6 – QTS Data Centers
For more information, see the June 10 directive here (PDF), the July 17 agency response here (PDF), and the August 3 audit announcement here (PDF).
