The Public Utility Commission votes Sept. 18 on the rule that decides how data centers and other enormous new electricity users get onto the Texas grid. Since the commission published the draft in March, the cash deposit it would make them post has been cut in half.
The rule covers any customer asking for 75 megawatts or more at a single site — roughly the appetite of a mid-sized data center, and far beyond what a factory or a hospital draws. Before the grid operator will even study such a request, the customer has to sign an agreement with the local utility, disclose who it is and what it intends to run, and post financial security. The March proposal set that security at $100,000 per megawatt. The order now before the commission sets it at $50,000. For a 500-megawatt campus, that is the difference between posting $50 million and posting $25 million.
The change follows a record built by roughly 90 commenters, among them Google, NRG, Vistra, Oncor, the Data Center Coalition, the Sierra Club and the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Chairman Thomas Gleeson floated a gradual escalator for the posting, and at least one developer filed in support of it. The commission turned aside several requests to rewrite which projects qualify for the grid operator’s first round of interconnection studies, saying a separate planning change it approved in June already settles that. Filings were still arriving the week the agenda posted.
A second adoption order on the same agenda would put utilities on a fixed inspection schedule for transmission and distribution poles — every year for transmission structures, every eight years for wooden distribution poles in coastal counties — and require anything graded unsafe to be fixed or replaced within six months, with a two-day deadline to make safe a pole at risk of imminent failure. It carries out a 2025 service-quality law. Four contested electric cases are also up, three of them arrangements pairing a single large customer with its own generator.
One smaller item is worth watching. A gas plant financed through the state’s Texas Energy Fund has asked the commission to push back the deadline for its first loan money, the latest such request since the Legislature’s Dec. 31, 2025 cutoff. The commission has granted extensions twice before.
Meeting at a glance
- When
- 9:30 a.m. CT Friday, September 18, 2026. The notice, TRD 2026005443, was filed September 10 at 2:27 p.m.
- Where
- Commissioners’ Hearing Room, seventh floor, William B. Travis Building, 1701 N. Congress Ave., Austin.
- Governing body & chair
- Public Utility Commission of Texas — five commissioners the governor appoints to six-year terms, subject to Senate confirmation. Thomas J. Gleeson is chairman. No seat is vacant.
- Format
- Open meeting, 27 items: four contested electric cases, four recommended adoption orders, and a closed session on litigation, personnel and security. Public comment is the first item, three minutes a speaker.
- Live video
- The commission streams its open meetings and keeps an archive on its website.
- Full agenda
- Secretary of State Open Meeting Viewer · agency agenda (PDF)
Commissioners
- Thomas J. Gleeson — chairman; Pflugerville; former agency executive director and chief operating officer.
- Kathleen Jackson — Beaumont; professional engineer; former Texas Water Development Board member.
- Courtney K. Hjaltman — Austin; lawyer; former public counsel for Texas utility ratepayers.
- Morgan Johnson — Austin; lawyer; former deputy general counsel to the governor.
- Patrick Rhode — Austin; consultant; former White House and Homeland Security official.
Roster from the commission’s commissioners page, cross-checked against the governor’s appointment releases. All five seats are filled. Terms: Gleeson to Sept. 1, 2029; Johnson to Sept. 1, 2031; Jackson and Rhode to Sept. 1, 2027. The Dispatch could not establish a current expiration date for Hjaltman’s term — her original appointment ran to Sept. 1, 2025, and no reappointment release was found on the governor’s website — so none is printed. Connie Corona is executive director. Staff contact: Carol Stewien, (512) 936-7275.