Editorial Articles
In-depth analysis on the forces shaping datacenter development
Saturday, August 15, 2026
Amazon's 7.65 GW Pecos Plant Was Cited Against the 765 kV Lines
At the Aug 14 PUCT open meeting, Val Verde County Commissioner Kerr Wardlaw said Amazon's Pecos gas plant cancels the case for 765 kV. Amazon confirmed the campus a week earlier and said it still plans to connect when the queue allows.
Friday, August 14, 2026
24 Million Barrels a Day. TCEQ Still Has No Final Produced-Water Discharge Permit.
Aug 11 Senate Natural Resources: TCEQ has six new produced-water discharge applications and seven land-application files. Chairman Wright said no final permit in nearly three years. TCEQ does not specifically permit data centers.
Thursday, August 13, 2026
Fort Worth Started a Data Center Moratorium Process. A Freeze, If Any, Is February.
Aug 11 Fort Worth City Council: unanimous start of LGC Ch 212 Subchapter E process, 10-1 DCIC and interconnection gate, closed-loop water rule. No live 90-day freeze.
Monday, August 10, 2026
Texas Certified 59 Data Center Tax Exemptions This Year. Senate Finance Spent 5.5 Hours Asking Why.
July 27 Senate Finance hearing on Tax Code 151.359 and 151.3595: 59 certifications this fiscal year against a study that assumed 12 over six years, capital verification at 3.4x minimum, electricity as the quiet lever, and the map of 143 facilities by effective date.
Tuesday, July 28, 2026
Texas Certified Tax Exemption Requests From 59 Data Centers So Far This Year. The Next Cost Estimate Gets Drafted in August.
Senate Finance took its first real accounting of the data center sales tax exemption on July 27. The Chair committed to filing legislation, the Comptroller put 138 certifications and the first compliance audits on the record, and the model that prices the 2027 bill gets drafted in August.
Thursday, July 9, 2026
Power vs. Public: Shifting the Data Center Narrative from Friction to Alignment
The industry scaled faster than public trust. Alignment is no longer a communications function; it is a delivery requirement.
Monday, June 29, 2026
45 Texas ZIP Codes Got a Data Center. Home Values Barely Moved.
A matched study of every Texas ZIP code that gained a data center at least three years ago finds no measurable hit to nearby home values. That pulls the empirical floor out from under one of the most common arguments for restricting where data centers get built.
Saturday, April 25, 2026
Inside PUC Docket 58881: Texas Approves a 265 MW AI Data Center Behind an Existing Wind Farm
On April 23, the Public Utility Commission of Texas approved the first net metering arrangement of its kind on the ERCOT grid. This is the full read of the order, the conditions, and what it means for the next wave of behind-the-meter datacenter deals.
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
Water, Not Power, Is the Real Constraint for Texas Data Centers
The 40 GW of power coming to Texas will get built. The question is whether the developers who build it have secured the water to run it.
Friday, March 20, 2026
A 4-Page White House Document Could Reshape Every Datacenter Permitting Fight in America
The Trump Administration's AI framework dropped today with 7 pillars and 4 pages addressed to Congress. Most coverage focuses on child safety and copyright. Two buried provisions matter more for datacenter developers than anything else in the document.
Thursday, March 19, 2026
AI Agents Don't Sleep. That Changes the Power Math.
The inference demand curve is about to look a lot more like baseload.
Saturday, March 14, 2026
PUCT's New Rule Does What No Other State Has Tried: Price Speculative Queue Positions Out of Existence
The Public Utility Commission just published the most consequential power rule for large Texas datacenters in years. If you're building in ERCOT territory, make sure your input is considered before the April 17 comment deadline.
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
Texas Wants $100K/MW From Datacenter Developers. Here's What That Means.
The Texas Public Utility Commission held an open meeting on February 20 that covered three separate rulemaking items directly targeting large load interconnections. If you're developing datacenter capacity in ERCOT territory, these aren't abstract policy discussions. They're the rules you'll operate under.