Governor Greg Abbott’s audit of data center projects in Texas is adding another layer of uncertainty to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) interconnection process, delaying approvals for large-load projects and raising questions about how future connections will be managed. While the audit is expected to take months to complete, developers also face longer-term uncertainty regarding the framework that will govern interconnections after the Batch Zero process concludes.
Bracewell’s Bryan Clark told the Houston Business Journal that approximately 205 gigawatts of large-load projects had been submitted for consideration through the Batch Zero process. Clark said ERCOT will request additional information from all proposed facilities as part of the audit and projects that fail to respond could be removed from Batch Zero.
“I think that there was a lot up in the air even before all of this as to how projects were going to connect in the future,” Bracewell’s Jared Berg told the Houston Business Journal.
“It’s not a question of whether you get interconnected; it’s always a question of when,” Berg said. “And to some extent, that timeline is going to dictate to what extent which of these projects are actually going to be viable in the first place.”
