CenterPoint's 17 GW ERCOT submission challenges the bearish power consensus
One utility's Batch Zero filings may be the clearest indication yet that Texas data center load is materializing faster than grid models assume.
CenterPoint Energy on Tuesday (2026-07-28) disclosed it had submitted more than 17 GW of large load projects to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas' new interconnection process and expects roughly 14 GW of that volume to qualify as base load or studied load, executives said during the company's second-quarter earnings call. That disclosure, from a single utility covering one portion of the Texas grid, arrives as ERCOT real-time power sentiment sits decidedly bearish.
The bearish thesis leans on supply. ERCOT's interconnection queue had grown to 438 GW of pending requests before the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved large-load processing rules, including the first batch known as Batch Zero, in June (2026-06-18). The prevailing read: so much generation is waiting to connect that Texas power faces oversupply, capping prices. But that framing weights the supply queue far more than the demand queue, and CenterPoint's filing suggests demand may be queuing with equal urgency.5
ERCOT's vice president of system operations, Dan Woodfin, has said demand could push above 92 GW in hotter-than-normal conditions once crypto-mining and data center growth is factored in. ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas, speaking at a June (2026-06-02) board meeting, walked back an earlier estimate of 228 GW of large load materializing by 2032, calling it "too high of a figure based on realistic expectations." Markets absorbed that walk-back as confirmation the demand story was overhyped. Yet Vegas only dialled back the ceiling; Woodfin's 92 GW peak demand scenario is itself significantly above historical norms, and 14 GW of new eligible load from a single utility would push the total well toward it.2
There is also a regulatory shift that has not been widely priced into demand models. The Texas PUC voted unanimously on Thursday (2026-07-09) to require large computational loads, including data centers and crypto-mining facilities, to ride through grid disruptions rather than disconnect when the system tightens. FERC moved in the same direction, ordering mandatory NERC reliability standards for computational loads, with entity responses due August 3, 2026. NERC's summer reliability assessment had specifically flagged unexpected large-load disconnections as creating oscillations "leaving little or no room for real-time responses."6,71
Those disconnections matter for price modeling. When large loads drop off suddenly during stress events, they depress real-time prices at exactly the moments when the grid is tightest. Mandatory ride-through rules change that dynamic: demand becomes stickier during scarcity hours, and price spikes could exceed what models built on prior disconnect behavior imply.
Natural gas pricing adds another dimension. NYMEX Henry Hub front-month was trading at $2.68/MMBtu on Tuesday (2026-07-28), keeping gas-fired generation competitive during evening ramp hours when solar output falls. Rayburn Electric Cooperative broke ground June 9 (2026-06-09) on a 570-MW natural gas plant in east Texas, adjacent to an existing 758-MW facility, a bet that firm dispatchable capacity retains value as the state layers in renewables. Low gas prices reduce the cost of sustaining that position.3
NERC's summer reliability assessment counted more than 58.5 GW of new bulk power system resources added nationally, with solar PV accounting for 30.5 GW nameplate and battery storage reaching 16 GW nameplate. Those additions will blunt extreme price outcomes on sunny afternoons. But data center load is flat and 24-hour, indifferent to solar output curves. The 14 GW CenterPoint expects to qualify under Batch Zero is demand that does not diminish after sunset.1
How many of those 14 GW clear ERCOT's screening, secure grid access agreements, and actually begin drawing power will be the concrete test of whether Texas load growth is as large as the CenterPoint filing implies. Queue attrition has a long history in Texas; the 438 GW supply queue is itself evidence of that tendency. The PUC reduced non-refundable application fees when it approved Batch Zero rules in June (2026-06-18), lowering the financial deterrent to over-filing and potentially inflating submitted GW relative to what connects. The Batch Zero approval rate, expected to become clearer as ERCOT works through submissions, is the number that will reshape how the market prices the demand side of the Texas power equation.4,5