ERCOT Sets Hourly Load Record as Abbott's Data Center Audit Holds 474 GW in Queue
Texas grid demand hit a new hourly high on Monday (2026-08-10) as Gov. Abbott's data center audit stalls 474 GW of interconnection requests.
ERCOT set a new hourly peak load record on Monday (2026-08-10), Rigzone reported, pushing the Texas grid to its limit at the height of summer. The operator noted that demand figures from the operating day are preliminary pending a final settlement pass, but the mark stands against a system that already supplies power to more than 27 million customers — roughly 90 percent of the state's electric load.8
Five days before the record, Governor Greg Abbott had ordered an audit of all data centers in ERCOT's interconnection queue, effectively stopping new connections as pending requests had climbed to roughly 474 GW. That figure dwarfs the grid's installed generation capacity many times over. Abbott's freeze arrived just as the state's new large-load interconnection framework was supposed to start functioning.7
The Public Utility Commission of Texas had approved formal rules for processing large-load connections on Thursday (2026-06-18), establishing a first tranche called Batch Zero to bring order to an overwhelmed pipeline. At the time of approval, requests stood at 438 GW, Utility Dive reported. Within weeks the figure had risen to 474 GW, indicating that appetite for Texas grid access had not slowed.5,7
The data center audit now sits on top of that unresolved backlog. Trade groups including the Texas Blockchain Council and the Texas Industrial Energy Consumers had already warned that ERCOT's separate proposals to prevent cascading outages could cost billions and delay facilities for years, E&E News reported in June (2026-06-02). Some individual projects seeking connections are sized above 4,000 MW — enough to supply roughly one million homes.1
Supply additions have been moving, but slowly. The $10 billion Texas Energy Fund, created in 2023, has committed roughly $3 billion across seven projects inside ERCOT's footprint. That total includes more than $215.5 million toward two new combustion gas turbines at NRG Energy's TH Wharton Generating Station, which recently entered commercial operation.3
Rayburn Electric Cooperative broke ground on a 570-MW natural gas plant on Tuesday (2026-06-09), adjacent to its existing 758-MW station. Total project cost is expected to come in under $685 million. About 60 percent will be backed by a 20-year Public Utility Commission loan at a 3 percent interest rate, with the remaining 40 percent financed through bond sales to investors.2
AEP Texas separately reached financial close on a Department of Energy loan of up to $3.26 billion around July 9 (2026-07-09), drawn from the Trump administration's Energy Dominance Financing Program, adding another stream of federal capital to the buildout.6
Federal regulatory attention has widened beyond Texas. FERC voted unanimously on Thursday (2026-06-18) to issue show-cause orders to all six regional transmission organizations and independent system operators under its jurisdiction, directing each to justify or rewrite large-load tariff structures under Section 206 of the Federal Power Act. ERCOT, as a state-jurisdictional operator, sits outside FERC's direct authority. But the federal action signals that large-load interconnection pressure is drawing scrutiny at every tier of U.S. grid governance, not just Austin.4
NYMEX Henry Hub front-month held flat at $2.80/MMBtu on Monday (2026-08-10), offering no signal of broader U.S. gas market stress. Inside ERCOT, gas-fired generation remains the primary dispatchable backstop as solar and wind fluctuate, and new capacity from the Energy Fund's committed projects will take years to fully commission.3,2
How Abbott's audit concludes is now the key variable for every large load in the queue. If restrictions tighten further, the gap between the 474 GW of pending requests and the grid's ability to absorb new demand grows wider — with peak load, as Monday (2026-08-10) confirmed, still pushing into new territory.7,8