Texans Must Come First.

Every manufacturer I've talked to this year has asked the same question about Texas: when can we get power, and will we be able to count on it?

Governor Abbott's order yesterday gives us part of the answer. ERCOT is sitting on 474 gigawatts of interconnection requests from more than 1,800 projects. Texas' record peak demand is 85.5 gigawatts. The queue represents more than five times what the entire grid has ever produced at its highest point. And that queue grew from 63 gigawatts at the end of 2024 to 474 gigawatts today. That is not organic demand growth. That is speculation.

Abbott ordered PUCT and ERCOT to audit every data center in that queue before any project moves forward. The audit requires disclosure of power demand and self-generation, water consumption and cooling technology, tax incentives received, and community impact. His direction was direct: "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. Simply put, Texans must come first."

In February 2021, Winter Storm Uri left millions of Texans without power and more than 200 people died. The grid serves 27 million people. A single AI data center can draw anywhere from 200 megawatts to a full gigawatt. When you stack those numbers against 474 gigawatts sitting in the interconnection queue, the stakes for every Texan sharing that grid are not abstract.

The Texas Conservative Coalition Research Institute testified to the Senate Committee on Business and Commerce last week that Senate Bill 6 already requires large load customers to share the load shed obligation when the grid is stressed. Data centers are legally on the hook to curtail when ERCOT calls for it. The audit is how you verify they can actually follow through.

My intuition says the most important part of this order isn't the denial authority. It's the data. ERCOT projects load growing to 130-150 gigawatts by 2030, nearly twice the 2024 peak. Planning for that growth requires knowing what load is actually committed. You can't build a grid around phantom reservations.

For data centers that have done the work, built efficient facilities, invested in their own generation, engaged the communities around them, this audit should not slow them down. The ones who should be worried are the ones who filed a reservation and hoped for the best.

Good neighbors earn their place on the Texas grid. Abbott just set the standard for what that looks like.