Wednesday, June 10, 2026

418 GW Knock on Texas Doors. Behind-the-Meter Builders Skip the Line.

Texas counties are fielding 480-plus datacenter requests totaling 418 GW through 2032, and the PUCT's Batch Zero rules landing by December will sort the speculative from the buildable. The operators already routed behind-the-meter, CyrusOne, Oracle, Crusoe, are showing the rest of the market what the screen rewards.

Today's Lead

The Public Utility Commission of Texas is building the screen that separates real load from speculative load before ratepayers eat the cost of phantom transmission. SB6's financial gates, the 4CP-to-12CP transition with a December deadline, and ERCOT's $50,000-per-megawatt Batch Zero security all converge on a single question: who's actually building, and who's just queuing?

Meanwhile, developers who can't wait for the answer are bypassing the grid entirely. Oracle's 2.45 GW fuel-cell campus in New Mexico and CyrusOne's 380 MW colocation behind Calpine's Freestone gas plant tell the same story from opposite ends of the queue.

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Power

The PUCT writes the rules while developers vote with their checkbooks.

Chairman Gleeson's framework is concrete: $50,000/MW financial security through Batch Zero, a 12CP transmission cost allocation with minimum demand charges landing by December, and a new reliability standard measuring outage frequency, duration, and magnitude. Texas counties are sitting on 480-plus datacenter requests totaling 418 GW through 2032, with Ellis County leading. Not all of it clears. That's the point of the screen.

The developers who aren't waiting have already routed around the queue. CyrusOne broke ground on 380 MW in Freestone County behind Calpine's 1 GW gas plant, with 760 MW of Constellation power already contracted. Oracle's Project Jupiter locked 2.45 GW of Bloom fuel cells for OpenAI. Crusoe holds nearly 5 GW under contract and paused Project Jade's 1.8 GW in Wyoming at a customer's request, anchoring instead at Stargate in Abilene. Risk: developers who treat interconnection as a commodity will lose to those structuring around SB6 now, and behind-the-meter strategy concentrates counterparty risk on a handful of merchant generators.

[1]·[3]·[4]·[5]·[6]

Water

Offsets are now a gate, not a courtesy.

Meta's $10 billion El Paso campus is the template: closed-loop liquid cooling, a 200% restoration pledge funding 177 million gallons annually through farmer irrigation upgrades, pecan micro-irrigation, and DigDeep colonia partnerships, plus an El Paso Electric agreement absorbing all serving costs. That's what disciplined benefit-sharing looks like in an arid region. Compare with Caldwell County, where commissioners passed a resolution opposing open-loop evaporative cooling for Tract's 3,000-acre, 4,000 MW Caldwell Valley project before permits landed.

The macro pressure justifies the structure. Texas datacenters are projected to consume 399 billion gallons by 2030, and two-thirds of 809 planned U.S. projects sit in drought-declared zones per Guardian/NOAA analysis. But cooling itself is only 4% of AI's total water demand through 2050 per Xylem and Global Water Intelligence; generation takes 54%, fab takes 42%. Risk: developers who lead with cooling efficiency alone will get caught by regulations written for the wrong number, while those who map generation water and fab proximity early will clear county friction first.

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Sources we cited

10 articles across 10 publishers · 325 reviewed today

[1]Texas Energy and Power Newsletter
The Regulator's Test for Real Load
Jun 10, 2026·PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson on screening speculative load from real projects, assigning the cost of growth to the customers who cause it, an…
[2]Autonocion
A data center for OpenAI is building its own power plant in a New Mexico desert town, big enough to out-generate the state's largest utility. The people next door are fighting it
Jun 9, 2026·Published: Jun 9, at 6:00pm ET If you have spent any time around the AI boom, you already know the part that never makes the keynote: all …
[3]Data Center Dynamics
CyrusOne breaks ground on 380MW data center in Texas
Jun 8, 2026·Campus colocated with Calpine natural gas plant CyrusOne has started work on a new data center development in Texas. The company last week…
[4]Crypto Briefing
Crusoe secures 5 gigawatts of data center contracts, pauses Wyoming project
Jun 9, 2026·The former Bitcoin mining company now commands nearly 5 GW of AI data center capacity while shelving its ambitious Wyoming campus at a custo…
[5]Yahoo
Texas Counties Face Surge in Data Center Requests
Jun 8, 2026·Texas: 480+ data center grid requests totaling 418 GW through 2032. Ellis leads; concerns over power, bills, water. David Stroud was convic…
[6]Energy News Beat
US Trade Gap Narrows as Oil Exports Offset AI-Driven Imports
Jun 9, 2026·The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in April 2026, with exports hitting a record high as surging crude oil and petroleum product shipments more …
[7]KFOX
Meta touts $10B El Paso data center, water and grid pledges as council weighs incentives
Jun 9, 2026·Heat Advisory noon through 9 p.m. Wednesday for El Paso metro. Stay hydrated and cool. EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — As the El Paso City C…
[8]San Antonio Express-News
Denver data center builder is moving into San Antonio, Austin metro areas, planning three projects - San Antonio Express-News
Jun 9, 2026·Microsoft’s Texas Research Park data center on the far West Side is seen in 2020. Tract is building its 265-acre Medina Technology Park in t…
[9]Smart Water Magazine
Water: The common overlooked area in the AI boom and venture capital
Jun 9, 2026·Discussions of the AI boom’s massive energy requirements have been making headlines for years, but the impact extends beyond the electric gr…
[10]Tom's Hardware
Most new U.S. AI data centers are being built in drought zones — two-thirds of 809 planned projects set for areas with water shortages
Jun 8, 2026·New water-demand analysis puts data center cooling at roughly 4% of AI's footprint, with fabs and power generation taking the rest. About t…

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