Coverage of the Texas electric grid and energy sector -- ERCOT reliability, generation capacity, rising power demand, rates, and the policy decisions shaping how the state keeps the lights on.
The Texas Senate Committee on Business and Commerce will take invited and public testimony July 29 on ERCOT reliability and Senate Bill 6's large-load rules, and on how a fast-expanding network of 765-kilovolt transmission lines will affect Texas landowners.
The agencies that run the Texas power grid have told Governor Greg Abbott they need new legal authority to keep the state's data-center boom from raising electric bills and threatening reliability — and, in one recommendation, to stop a hostile foreign government from using a data center to disrupt the grid.
The Railroad Commission of Texas drew more than 1,100 attendees and over 60 exhibitors to its 2026 Regulatory Conference, setting a new attendance record for the agency’s premier annual educational event.
The two utilities seeking permission to build a 370-mile power line from San Antonio to the Permian Basin asked the judges hearing the case on Monday to reject a landowner coalition's bid to consider new evidence after the hearing ended.
A Hill Country landowner group is asking the judges weighing a 370-mile power line to consider new evidence before they recommend where it should run — a recommendation expected within weeks.
Texas regulators have imposed the first hard operating requirement on the data centers crowding onto the state grid, and the industry is weighing whether to fight it in court.
Governor Greg Abbott's deadline for regulators to spell out how they will keep data-center costs off Texans' electric bills arrives Friday, but the state's push to rein in the industry is running into a problem it cannot regulate away: the calendar.
Texans for Responsible Infrastructure Investment announced that three local economic development organizations — the Copperas Cove Economic Development Corporation, Forward Wichita Falls and the Sherman Economic Development Corporation — have joined the statewide coalition advocating for major electric transmission investments, according to a July 14 news release.
Texas utility regulators have two days to answer the governor.
As the Public Utility Commission of Texas approaches a cluster of routing decisions on the state's first 765-kilovolt transmission lines, the fight increasingly turns on a single question: whether the demand forecast for West Texas — driven largely by oil-and-gas electrification in the Permian Basin and, increasingly, by data centers — justifies stringing ultra-high-voltage lines across ranchland.