Any company that wants to plug a data center or other very large power user into the Texas grid must now put down $100,000 for a study and post $50,000 for every megawatt it requests, under a Public Utility Commission rule that took effect Oct. 8.
The adopted rule settles a question that summaries of it had gotten wrong. Some published accounts described a sliding scale of study fees. The rule text, printed in the Oct. 2 Texas Register, sets one flat study fee of $100,000. The tiered amounts that appeared elsewhere were proposals from commenters in the rulemaking, such as the Sierra Club and the Texas Industrial Energy Consumers, which the commission did not adopt, according to its responses to comments published with the rule.
The money matters because Texas has more requests to connect large users than the grid can serve. The rule is meant to make developers show they are serious before utilities and ERCOT, the nonprofit that runs the grid for most of the state, spend time studying their projects. It applies to sites asking to connect 75 megawatts or more of demand, and to expansions of that size.
Under the rule, a customer must pay the $100,000 fee to the utility that will connect it. The fee covers studies by that utility and by ERCOT. It is due no later than the date the customer signs what the rule calls an intermediate agreement, a preliminary contract that comes before a full interconnection agreement. The rule also says ERCOT’s own rules may add a further flat study fee, so $100,000 may not be the final total.
The security is separate. A customer must post $50,000 per megawatt of requested peak demand, or per megawatt of added demand for an expansion, also by the date the intermediate agreement is signed. A 300-megawatt campus would therefore post $15 million. Beginning in 2032, the commission will adjust both figures every five years for inflation.
The commission wrote that state law requires a flat study fee. It declined a request from CenterPoint Energy to drop the fee requirement, saying a single standard fee would make utility practices more uniform. It also declined a request to build in regular updates to the fee amount, saying it could amend the rule later as more study-cost data arrives.
Commenters disagreed over how large the deposit should be. Some wanted smaller deposits so fewer projects would be shut out; others wanted larger or size-based deposits so speculative requests would drop out of the line. The adopted rule picked a single per-megawatt number for all sizes.
The rule is one of several moving at once. Gov. Greg Abbott’s Sept. 21 letter to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality directs the agency to pause issuing permits for data-center projects until ERCOT finishes a review, and asks for a compliance update by Oct. 19. ERCOT has asked data centers of 25 megawatts or more to answer its impact survey by 5 p.m. Oct. 12. On Oct. 1 the commission denied a petition that would have required data centers to measure their power and water use, as the Dispatch reported.
The commission’s next open meeting is Oct. 15, when its agenda includes a final order on a solar project that plans to supply a co-located data center.
Developers with pending requests now face the new deposits, and the next checkpoints come as ERCOT’s survey closes Oct. 12 and the TCEQ update comes due Oct. 19.