Texas has reportedly frozen new data center permits after the queue for large customers on its main power grid ballooned over 18 months. An essay by a16z partner Ryan McEntush says the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, had 63 gigawatts of large loads waiting at the end of 2024. By June 2026, the queue had reached 474 GW, more than five times the state’s record peak demand, with data centers accounting for about 90%.
Those requests far exceed the capacity that has cleared the process so far. The essay says only 9.5 GW has been approved and about 4.3 GW is operating. McEntush attributes the gap partly to duplicate applications and speculative projects, which make it difficult for grid planners to distinguish funded sites from placeholders and decide who should pay for upgrades.
Reliability adds another constraint. The essay says ERCOT is studying loads of 75 megawatts or more in a batch process, while also preparing for the risk that multiple data centers could switch to backup power during a voltage disturbance and suddenly disappear from the grid. Under some conditions, McEntush writes, ERCOT can lose only about 3.2 GW of load at once without serious problems.
McEntush argues that Texas should narrow the blanket pause once credible projects have funded an initial phase. His proposed path would require developers to post security, pay for reserved capacity and meet staged milestones, while giving projects faster connections if they can reduce demand when the grid is tight. It is a prescription from the essay, not an announced state policy.
