• 2 min read
Texas pauses data-center approvals for grid audits
Texas is auditing more than 1,800 grid-connection projects, about 90% of them data centers, amid concerns over power and water use.
Image: iXBT
Texas has paused approvals for almost 2,000 planned data centers while state officials investigate their potential impact on the power grid, water supplies and local communities.
Governor Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and grid operator ERCOT to audit every data-center project waiting in the queue for an electricity connection. ERCOT is currently tracking more than 1,800 projects with a combined requested capacity exceeding 474 gigawatts—more than five times the grid’s record peak demand.
Not every project in the queue is a data center, but roughly 90% are, according to iXBT. Most have not yet started construction.
What the Texas audit will examine
Abbott has asked operators to provide information about:
- Tax incentives they expect to receive
- Electricity consumption and generation
- Water use and cooling systems
- Measures intended to reduce effects on nearby communities
- Ownership of each facility
Texas currently has at least 335 operating data centers, while at least 248 more are planned, according to data cited by the Texas Tribune. Other projects are at earlier development stages but have already entered the grid-connection queue.
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The scale of the queue is significant for cloud and colocation customers in the United States and Europe. Compute remains available through major US and EU cloud regions and colocation markets: representative pricing includes AWS EC2 t3.medium at about $0.0416 per hour in a US region, compared with Google Cloud’s n1-standard-1 at $0.0475 per hour. Azure publishes regional pricing through its calculator, while Equinix generally quotes colocation based on location, power and facility size rather than listing one standard per-kilowatt rate.
Those alternatives also underline what the Texas review could affect: not access to compute today, but the pace and economics of future physical capacity in one of the largest US data-center markets. The state has not said when the audits will finish or when paused interconnection approvals will resume. It also has not identified which ERCOT projects will be approved, delayed or rejected.
With no timeline and no standard public colocation rate to use as a benchmark, the immediate result is a major queue under review—not a published estimate of how much capacity Texas will ultimately add.
Enterprise Editor
Marcus follows the money. He covers enterprise software, cloud architecture, and the tectonic shifts in Big Tech strategy. He translates dense earnings calls and complex M&A activity into actionable insights about where the industry is actually heading. If a tech giant makes a silent pivot, Marcus is usually the first to notice.
via iXBT
