ERCOT

Texas is in the middle of building one of the largest transmission infrastructure projects in its history: three 765-kilovolt power line corridors stretching over 1,200 miles across the state. The stated purpose is grid reliability for the Permian Basin. The real story is more complicated, and it involves eminent domain, a generation shortfall nobody’s fixed yet, and a bill that every Texas ratepayer will help pay whether they ever see one of these towers or not. ...

Texas spent the last few years marketing itself as the place AI companies go to build without friction. Cheap land, a deregulated grid, and a governor who called the state the “epicenter” of AI. That pitch just hit a wall. On August 3, 2026, Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to conduct a full audit of every data center currently working its way through the state’s grid interconnection process. Until that audit wraps up, no new data center gets approved to connect. That single directive touches roughly 1,800 projects and 474 gigawatts of power requests, more than five times the grid’s all-time peak demand. ...