ERCOT Says It Has Paused the Energization of New Large Load Data Centers and Crypto Mining Facilities Until Its Verification and Audit and Community Impact Review Are Complete

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, gave its board an update on Batch Zero for its meeting of September 14 and 15, 2026. The deck is "For information only," and it asks for no action. It defines Batch Zero as "ERCOT's one-time transitional study of the reliability impacts of Large Loads that seek to interconnect to the ERCOT system and meet certain eligibility criteria" under Planning Guide Revision Request 145, PGRR 145 for short. A Large Load, in the deck's definition, is 75 MW or greater. The deck reports changes made and planned in response to a directive from the governor of Texas on August 3, 2026. Parts of it, and of a market notice ERCOT issued on September 9, follow, not the whole.

The Directive and the Pause

The market notice says the governor directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT to conduct a verification and audit of data center projects advancing through the interconnection process, and the deck says the directive was to complete "a comprehensive verification and audit" before allowing those loads to proceed. ERCOT says it took immediate action, and the deck lists its actions. On August 3 it issued a market notice "pausing the Batch Zero study process and delaying final classification of all Large Loads." It paused approvals to energize data centers or crypto mining facilities of 75 MW or greater. On August 10 it asked the commission for three good cause exceptions for PGRR 145, and the commission granted all three on August 20.

"ERCOT has paused the energization of new Large Load data centers and crypto mining facilities until the completion of the verification and audit and community impact review," the deck says. The pause "impacts Large Load data centers and crypto facilities not yet connected to the ERCOT system." Large Loads "must meet eligibility verification to move forward."

For a data center waiting on power in Texas, the date that matters is no longer only the end of a study. Energization waits on the verification and audit and on the community impact review, and the deck does not yet say how far the verification moves the study.

Key Changes to Batch Zero

ERCOT "has begun a verification and audit of the eligibility of all Large Loads provisionally included in Batch Zero," and will file its Batch Zero Eligibility Verification Report with the commission by December 10, 2026. Separately, it will send requests for information to the transmission and distribution service providers of data centers and crypto mining facilities, both medium loads of 25 to 75 MW and Large Loads, to gather "certain information regarding the impact of these Loads on their communities," and file a Community Impact Review Report by the same date. The deck calls the verification and audit and the community impact process "Two separate and distinct work streams," and says both "are proceeding on schedule."

Final inclusion or exclusion of each project "will be based on the results of the eligibility verification and audit and provided in December," where PGRR 145 had required ERCOT to provide a final classification on August 7, 2026. And "ERCOT is still determining the impact to the Batch Zero Study timeline." PGRR 145, the deck notes, had required ERCOT to complete the study by April 9, 2027.

The Provisional Count, and the Verification Requests

On September 3, ERCOT gave the interconnecting transmission service providers a provisional classification of each Batch Zero Large Load as base, studied or excluded. In its key takeaways the deck says 204 projects, 66.4 GW, "met the qualifications to be conditionally included as base load," and 158 projects, 127.9 GW, as studied load. The key takeaways give no year for these figures. A chart further on labels the studied load 125.4 GW for the same 158 projects. The chart, its note says, "omits excluded load," which it gives as 302.2 GW in 373 projects. The deck also says almost all Large Loads not yet energized are subject to the verification process of PGRR 145.

The market notice of September 9 says ERCOT has begun issuing verification requests for information, RFIs, to a majority of the interconnecting Large Load entities with a Large Load conditionally included in Batch Zero, and will send more through the end of that month. Complete responses, including all required supporting documentation and "notarized attestations" from the Large Load entity, its interconnecting transmission service provider and, if applicable, its interconnecting distribution service provider, are due "no later than 10 Business Days following issuance of the RFI." The Large Load entity "may request an extension of no more than 5 Business Days." And "Failure to timely provide a complete response to any ERCOT RFI or failure to otherwise satisfy the verification requirements will result in the Large Load being excluded from ERCOT's Batch Zero interconnection process."

The provisional numbers measure the queue. They do not say what will connect.