The Texas House Committee on State Affairs will take public testimony Wednesday, Aug. 19, on the two biggest fights on the state’s grid — data centers and the proposed 765,000-volt transmission lines — according to the hearing notice posted on the Legislature’s schedule. The hearing, called by committee chair Rep. Ken King (R-Canadian), gavels in at 8 a.m. in the John H. Reagan Building in Austin.
The timing puts lawmakers squarely in the middle of a regulatory pileup. The hearing falls five days after the Public Utility Commission’s special Friday meeting on the Permian power lines and one day before the commission’s regular Aug. 20 session, where ERCOT — the agency that runs the grid for most of the state — has said it will ask for more time on its stalled data-center review.
The committee’s data-center charge is broad. Per the notice, members will study the industry’s “importance to global competitiveness and national security,” its “direct and indirect economic growth potential,” and the education and training pipeline needed “to satisfy increasing labor demands.”
They will also review the regulatory framework and “recommend proposals to streamline regulations while enabling communities to plan and manage growth responsibly,” and examine the implementation of Senate Bill 6 — the 2025 law governing how giant electricity users connect to the grid — along with ERCOT’s batch study process, which reviews connection requests in groups rather than one at a time.
That streamlining language lands on an industry the state has frozen in place. Gov. Greg Abbott directed the commission and ERCOT on Aug. 3 to audit every data center seeking a grid connection — roughly 474 gigawatts of requests, about 90% of them data centers, more than five times the record demand of 91,308 megawatts the grid served on July 22, according to the governor’s letter.
No project moves forward until the audit is done, says Abbott. ERCOT responded the same day by suspending the notices that were due Aug. 7 telling projects where they stand in line, a freeze The Texas Dispatch reported last week. In that market notice, ERCOT said it would file a request for a good cause exception — in plain terms, formal permission to miss its own deadlines — before the Aug. 20 meeting. As of Tuesday morning, the notice still said the filing had not been made.
The hearing will be the House’s first extended look at questions the Senate took up July 29, when ERCOT President Pablo Vegas told the Business and Commerce Committee that statewide demand could approach 175,000 megawatts by 2032, nearly double the current record, with data centers driving most of the growth. The Dispatch covered the run-up to that hearing, when the state’s data-center rules were already months behind schedule. They still are: the commission has not finally adopted the rule SB 6 requires spelling out how large loads can be curtailed and what security deposits they owe.
Underneath the procedure sits a plain question the charge language gestures at: which projects bring their own power, water and money to Texas, and which lean on everyone else’s. Abbott’s audit demands answers on exactly those points — on-site generation, water sources and cooling technology, tax incentives received, and who actually owns each project.
The committee’s second charge is one sentence: “Review the regulatory and planning processes regarding the proposed 765-kV transmission lines” — the three highest-capacity lines ever proposed in Texas, meant to move power to the Permian Basin, whose approval process lawmakers including Sen. Charles Schwertner and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick have asked the commission to halt.
Texans who cannot attend can submit written comments on either charge through the House’s online portal until the hearing adjourns; in-person testimony is limited to two minutes per witness. The committee’s recommendations will feed the session that convenes in January 2027 — and by the time the gavel falls on Aug. 19, the commission will be one day from deciding how much longer the state’s data-center pause runs.