HB 5066 Cut CCN Clocks to 180 Days. It Did Not Require 765 kV.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas unanimously approved 765 kV for the Permian Reliability Plan in April 2025. On August 19 the House Committee on State Affairs spent roughly six hours on that voltage choice and on the 180-day CCN clock HB 5066 wrote into statute. PUC Chair Thomas Gleeson opened the charge with both facts: the bill shortened CCN timelines from one year to 180 days; it did not require a 765 kV buildout. Voltage was a commission decision after ERCOT analysis. Almost everything else in the room was about how that clock works when hundreds of landowners show up.

Watch the 765-kV portion: youtube.com/watch?v=_ahTTxLyNPw

Full House video (data centers earlier that day, then this charge): house.texas.gov/videos/22746.

Chair Ken King ran invited panels and a long public line with the comment portal left open through Friday, August 21 at 5pm. No bill sat before the committee. King closed by saying landowners were heard and the conversation continues into the 90th.

Open the Texas map → HyperscaleNews.com/map · Claim a free issue →

April 2025 locked voltage. HB 5066 locked the clock.

Gleeson walked the path: October 2024 Permian plan approval, the January 2025 RTP-versus-STEP comparison, workshops through early spring, then the April unanimous vote. Three import paths, five CCN projects, plus 345 kV and lower underbuilds. He said discontent concentrates on 765; the Permian 345s lined up for the next open meeting drew less heat.

Right-of-way math cut both ways on the record. A single 345 typically needs about 150 feet of right of way; 765 about 200. The same Permian layout at 345 needs two to three times as many lines. Utilities and large buyers argued fewer corridors and higher transfer. Landowners argued geography, bisected ranches, stale maps, and river crossings. The extra ~50 feet was not their lead complaint.

Without more transmission and generation, Gleeson said, far West Texas faces rotating-outage risk as early as next summer. CREZ history sat next to that warning: planned about $4.9B, delivered about $7.9B. Miles and turn structures drove overruns. The Permian build gets a CREZ-like cost monitor. Gleeson also committed to final-order language directing TDUs to mitigate impacts, including avoiding bisection where feasible, at siting after route selection.

Ninety days for parties inside a 180-day statute

OPUC Public Counsel Ben Barkley put the calendar math on the table. Of 180 days, roughly 60 for the ALJ and 30 to 35 for the PUC leave about 90 days for parties. One example he described: a four-day merits hearing with about 230 parties and about five minutes of cross each, then 70 briefs with a four-day reply window. About 600 parties were excluded on procedural grounds in one instance. Barkley supports a longer clock and pro se protections so a missed position statement is not a death penalty. He also agreed that utilities recover attorney fees through rates while landowners pay out of pocket and again in rates.

SOAH Chief ALJ Christopher Monson stayed on procedure and said he is ethically barred from the merits. The compressed clock blocks the classic alignment work that used to negotiate hundreds of routes down to a short list. Unlike some TCEQ statutes, SOAH has no authority to expand the PUC CCN 180-day clock for due-process showings. The only pressure valve is mandamus for a decision. Two of five Permian 765 dockets were already done; the rest were expected out before month-end. Too late to join those.

Erath County Judge Brandon Huckabee put the notice problem in one question: if a Texan can have a 765 kV line placed across their property without attending a public meeting where that route was presented, what does due process mean? Segment C8 in Erath was added after the Rule 22.52 public meeting. The PFD still recommends it. Oncor's Geren Taylor said owners get statutory notice at application filing when links are added after meetings, that Oncor will not seek court mandamus if the PUC needs limited grace past day 180, and that minor route modifications can sometimes move mid-parcel lines to boundaries after an order. That option is available in some cases and unavailable in others. Paralleling roads and pipelines can fight parcel lines.

Landowner panels stacked the same pattern with different dockets. Joanna Freeble described Import Path 1 notice jumping from about 2,400 at the meeting to about 5,000 at filing. John Burrow put about 1,400 yellow-route owners on about three weeks to intervene after routes were added post-meeting. Sidra Hansen: about 280 dismissed for missing filings, roughly 55 percent of successful interveners in that count. Mia Serrat put a Bell/Big Hill application at about 3,443 pages, then 714 testimony filings and about 21,200 pages before a nine-day rebuttal window. Diane Clements, 15, asked the committee not to treat White Horse Christian Academy and the family ranch as acceptable damage on Dinosaur-Longshore segment C3.

The need case did not wait for data centers

ERCOT COO Woody Rickerson said three studies (the July 2024 Permian Basin study plus the 2024 and 2025 RTPs) recommended 765 across load scenarios. The case is reliability-driven. He still cited more than $200M per year in congestion savings versus an equivalent 345 build. Generic transmission constraints are worse than in prior years. Pulling 765 would invalidate 600+ TSP large-load studies used in Batch Zero assumptions. Oncor pointed members to ERCOT's August 12 letter to Rep. Charlie Geren: far West load-shed risk, generation alone insufficient, and topology treated as interdependent across 58 RPG projects plus those 600+ studies. Taylor rejected a Texas Public Policy Foundation $80–100B "lifetime" cost framing as compounded ROE and O&M exaggeration, putting Permian capital near $13B as a starting point in that math.

TXOGA President Todd Staples put about $14B on the Permian plan figure and about 6 GW of unmet demand ready to take and pay for service, separate from data centers. Production is up 430 percent from 2015 to 2025. One unnamed member just committed about $125M more temporary power after getting half the megawatts promised; temp power runs about 2.5 to 3× grid cost. Staples said a pause on the clock only stops the solution; it doesn't stop the clock on the problem.

Will McAdams, former PUC commissioner, walked peak load from 85.5 GW in 2023 toward about 121 GW by 2031 on traditional industrial and organic growth alone, roughly 40 percent. Native load about +9 GW; traditional industrial about +26 GW. He called data centers a red herring on that stack. Delay past session into new law, new rules, ERCOT restudy, and new hearings could mean about three years before forward motion. Earliest Dinosaur-Longshore in-service was framed as 2028.

Walt Baum (Powering Texans / Texas Competitive Power Advocates) cited about 1,500 MW of new gas online since last summer and about 4,000 MW of TEST-program gas by 2029. Existing gas often runs at 40 to 60 percent capacity; wires unlock underused East Texas thermal for West Texas gaps. Katie Coleman (Texas Association of Manufacturers / Texas Chemistry Council) said Houston import has only about 5 GW of remaining capacity and that changing approved topology forces a redo of hundreds of load and generation studies. John Pitts (Texas Energy Buyers Alliance) cited member-study claims of up to about 5× benefits per dollar for 765 versus 345 and congestion on the order of $3B per year. Graham Bacon (Enterprise Products) said grid power for Permian processing is often 5 to 8 years out, with on-site temp generation about 3 to 5× grid cost.

Equipment already ordered. Recovery waits for used and useful.

LCRA's Emily Jolley put about $92M of equipment spend already on the books. Rate recovery arrives only when used and useful, roughly a 2031 filing after an end-2030 in-service target. She suggested timeline tiers by number of noticed landowners, not voltage alone. AEP Texas President and COO Adrian Rodriguez flagged slot and procurement risk if Texas delays while other grids bid the same long-lead gear. CPS Energy's Jonathan Tijerina put four open houses across 14 counties, about 4,412 landowners reached, about 470 attendees, and 1,600+ feedback forms.

Jim Scott, a routing planner, argued Texas runs an application process under statute rather than a routing methodology with a recipe. He asked for study-area-first notice, shared environmental baselines, joint design sessions, and corridor modeling before engineers draw links. Chair Ken King told Scott the process looks arcane next to what Google Earth shows a buyer now.

What the 90th will fight over

Open hooks already named on the record:

1. CCN clock design. Restore 365 days, or tier by noticed landowners, miles, or dollars (the LCRA / Oncor / Rep. Chris Turner consensus zone). Add SOAH or PUC authority to toll for due process, TCEQ-style.
2. Notice when links change. If routes are added after Rule 22.52 meetings, is filing-day notice enough, or is a new public meeting mandatory?
3. Pro se survival rules. Death-penalty dismissal for missed position statements after successful intervention.
4. Fee asymmetry. Cap or reallocate utility CCN legal spend; landowner cost recovery when routes move off their land after they spent to intervene.
5. Routing statute with a recipe. Corridor-first methodology, current imagery, Railroad Commission pipeline cross-checks before filing.
6. Need refresh versus topology lock-in. Who decides, on what record, before CCNs finalize, when Batch Zero and RPG plans treat 765 as base.
7. Market design companion. Generation brought with load, underused East Texas fleet, transmission-plus-generation package for Permian and Houston import.
8. Compensation model. Ongoing easement value share versus fair-market and remainder damages, without a neighbor veto of willing sellers.

Rep. Drew Darby pressed double-pay legal fees and C8 notice. Rep. Charlie Geren, who authored the 180-day piece for a Permian plan rather than a statewide spiderweb, agreed to relook the clock. Rep. Chris Turner asked about bisect avoidance after Gleeson's commitment and about when LCRA recovers the $92M. Rep. Rafael Anchía walked native-load need of about 9 GW. Rep. Richard Peña Raymond pressed ROW common sense: one 765 versus two to three 345s. Rep. John Smithee asked whether SOAH can pause and send a case back in extraordinary circumstances; under the current PUC CCN statute, no.

Multiple public witnesses asked the committee to pause or deny now. Chair Ken King said there is no bill today and that the conversation continues. PUC oral arguments and September CCN deadlines run on a parallel clock.

The 90th inherits the clock and the topology

Chair Ken King said no one had yet been served with eminent domain, and that State Affairs will not move a landowner-blind process next session. The need case from ERCOT, TXOGA, and industrials stays load-serving and pre-dates the data-center stack. The process case from OPUC, SOAH, county judges, and landowners is the 180-day arithmetic, late-added links, and procedural exclusions. The 90th can rewrite notice, clocks, and pro se rules without pulling a topology that already anchors 58 RPG projects and 600+ large-load studies.

Open the Texas map → HyperscaleNews.com/map · Claim a free issue of Hyperscale News → · Subscribe →

Sources

1. Texas House Committee on State Affairs, interim hearing, 765-kV transmission charge, August 19, 2026. Per-charge YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ahTTxLyNPw. Full House video: https://www.house.texas.gov/videos/22746.
2. Invited regulators and process: PUC Chair Thomas Gleeson; ERCOT COO Woody Rickerson; OPUC Public Counsel Ben Barkley; SOAH Chief ALJ Christopher Monson.
3. Transmission service providers: AEP Texas Adrian Rodriguez; Oncor Geren Taylor; CPS Energy Jonathan Tijerina; LCRA Emily Jolley.
4. Load, generation, oil and gas, buyers: Powering Texans / TCPA Walt Baum; TXOGA Todd Staples; TAM / Texas Chemistry Council Katie Coleman; McAdams Energy Group Will McAdams; TEBA John Pitts; Texas Alliance of Energy Producers Carr Ingham; Enterprise Products Graham Bacon.
5. Local officials and routing critic: Erath County Judge Brandon Huckabee; Jim Scott (routing planner); public landowners and counsel as listed in the hearing analysis.
6. Hearing notice: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/schedules/html/C4502026081908001.htm.
7. Public comments portal (open through 2026-08-21 5pm per Chair): https://comments.house.texas.gov/home?c=c450.

Numbers above are from the hearing record and analysis note. Dollar, mile, and intervener counts are as spoken on the record; treat advocacy cost studies ($80–100B) as claimed, not commission findings. ASR caveats apply to names and exact phrasings.

Not legal advice. Confirm statutes and agency filings against primary sources.