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.
A company that wants to plug a large data center into the Texas grid would sign one standard contract that makes it post cash-backed guarantees, report how much water it will use and disclose its backup generators, under a draft the Public Utility Commission of Texas will consider Nov. 5.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved a plan to run a 180-megawatt data center directly off a Pecos County solar farm on Oct. 15, overruling the local wires utility, which had argued the grid study behind the deal was out of date and that the risk would land on its other customers.
Dr. Joshua Rhodes did the math so the rest of Texas wouldn't have to.
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.
Texas will not require data centers to measure how much electricity and water they use inside their buildings.
Senators spent more than six hours Sept. 30 asking who should control the cost of Texas' transmission buildout, with witnesses urging competitive bidding, a lower guaranteed return for utilities and relief for ratepayers before the 765-kV Permian Basin lines are built.
Public Utility Commission of Texas Commissioner Courtney Hjaltman has been appointed to the Advisory Council to the Board of Directors of the Electric Power Research Institute, according to a Sept. 23 news release from the PUCT.
On Sept. 30, a Texas House select committee will take testimony on a question no Texas Legislature has formally studied: whether the state can absorb counties that currently belong to New Mexico.
David Thompson lives across the road from one of two data center campuses rising on San Antonio's far West Side, each with its own gas-fired power plant.
The Texas Senate Committee on Business and Commerce will gavel in at 9 a.m. Sept. 30 in Capitol Extension room E1.012 to take invited and public testimony on the rising cost of building and paying for transmission lines, the rollout of the new Texas Cyber Command and how online platforms sell concert and event tickets.
Gov. Greg Abbott's Sept. 21 order halting state permits for data centers reaches a group his first pause left alone: projects that plan to build their own power plants instead of solely drawing from the grid.
Texas lets a solar developer run a project for 20 years, and a wind developer for 10, before posting a dollar toward tearing it down.
A coalition of data center developers wants the Texas grid operator to change the rule that decides who gets shut off first when electricity runs short, and it is arguing that the state's largest new power customers will build outside the grid entirely if the answer stays no.
Two Panhandle landowners told state regulators on Sept. 14 that a power line projected to cost as much as $1.08 billion should not be built across Texas farmland at all, because the electricity demand driving it sits across the state line in New Mexico.