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In early August, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a “comprehensive verification and audit” of all data centers seeking to connect to Texas’ power grid, halting the approval of new data center projects.
Texas House lawmakers are set to hear invited and public testimony during a wide-ranging data center hearing Aug. 19, marking the first legislative hearing about the booming industry since the audit was announced.
Community Impact will update this article throughout the hearing.
What to expect
Topics before the House State Affairs Committee will include:
The 765-kV plans are pending before the Public Utility Commission of Texas amid pushback from landowners and some state lawmakers.
The hearing is scheduled for 8 a.m. Aug. 19 in room 140 of the John H. Reagan State Office Building in Austin, according to the meeting notice. Those interested in speaking to the committee must register at kiosks outside the hearing room before 10 a.m., and written comments can be submitted here until the hearing ends.
Other data center-focused hearings this summer have included testimony from state regulators, energy executives, data center developers, landowners and residents from across Texas.
The background
Under the audit ordered by Abbott, proposed data centers in line to join the ERCOT grid must provide the state information about their electric and water use; water resource impacts; how they plan to mitigate effects on nearby communities; the tax incentives they are receiving; and who owns each proposed facility, Community Impact reported.
Dozens of data centers have released statements expressing support for the state audit and Abbott’s standards. The Data Center Coalition, which advocates for the industry, also supports his approach, Abbott announced Aug. 18.
ERCOT plans to audit between 250-300 proposals for large facilities, most of which are data centers, as part of the process, officials said during an Aug. 14 PUC meeting. The agency was already planning to evaluate large projects under a scheduled “batch study,” although it postponed that process and moved audit requirements “to the front of the line” under the governor’s order, according to Chad Seely, ERCOT’s general counsel and chief compliance officer.
It will take ERCOT “several months” to audit roughly 200 gigawatts of “potentially eligible large loads,” Seely told the commission. That prospective demand is more than twice ERCOT’s recent demand record of 91 gigawatts, which was set on July 22.
“We want to kind of be holistic and grab as much information as possible to get back to the PUC, to the legislature and the governor,” Seely said Aug. 14. “From a holistic standpoint, having all that community impact information on how [data centers] are handling water technology and power deliverability gives a better perspective to the state as we see these loads start to come onto the grid over the next several years.”
ERCOT will present more detailed information about how the audits will work and how long they will take during PUC meetings this week, Seely noted.
More context
Recent Community Impact articles on the Texas power grid and the data center debate at the legislature include:
