Only 22 GW Clear Section 9.5 Under Senate Bill 6 Batch Zero

ERCOT is sorting vapor from executable megawatts. Of 445.8 GW in large-load applications in the April 2026 monthly report, 321 GW had filed no studies and only 22 GW met Section 9.5 maturity; 5.9 GW is energized and 3.2 GW has approval but has not switched on.

Batch Zero, approved by the Public Utility Commission of Texas in June under Senate Bill 6, now studies loads of 75 MW and above together, prices transmission upgrades against real grid headroom, and treats unfinished models and missing site control as stall signals, not queue progress. ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas called it a fundamental shift in how the ISO manages large-load growth.

Out-of-state siting risk is concrete. Utah's Stratos project, pitched at 9 GW on up to 20,000 acres in Box Elder County beside the Great Salt Lake, cleared an obscure commission path in May, then met bipartisan county revolt, fairgrounds-scale meetings, and electoral pushback after skipping normal environmental and community review.

Virginia's pipeline is already taking casualties: Balico withdrew an $8.85B Pittsylvania rezoning under organized opposition, and developers abandoned the Prince William Digital Gateway after court invalidation of the supervisory vote. Georgia Power finalized Project Camelot with OpenAI at 3.2 GW on 1,400 acres in Effingham County, the state's largest single-user power deal, while the Public Service Commission stretched staff review 13 days and left the contract redacted until a September 3 summary; U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock called for a construction moratorium pending water, air, and incentive transparency. Heatmap and Embold polling shows local project support collapsing from 43% to 15%, with more than 500 jurisdictions adding severe constraints since the start of 2025 and contested projects hitting a 50% cancellation rate in the first half of 2026. Capital still flows to jurisdictions that keep process open and self-supplied paths viable; Texas remains that destination when developers treat community and ratepayer architecture as sequencing work, not afterthoughts.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa, a state representative, used an El Paso stop to call for an emergency legislative session on data centers and pledged to nullify water contracts that threaten residential supply if elected in November 2026. Only Governor Greg Abbott can call a special session before the next regular legislature convenes January 12, 2027; Abbott's recent Meta and tech agreements stress cost-sharing and conservation review, with no jurisdiction over El Paso Electric outside ERCOT.

Lenders are tightening the same political gate. Seventy-five projects worth $130B were blocked or delayed in Q1 2025, and the six largest banks now require permits and community agreements before construction funding triggers, leaving capital idle until both sides close. A Wisconsin resident's August 31 public comment in PUCT Control No. 58317 Item 60 urged a 3-mile residential buffer, independent review, and binding benefit agreements for three North Richland Hills Iron Horse sites, a signal of friction even though land use sits with the city and Tarrant County, not the Commission.

Bottom line: price community benefit, water offsets, and permit timing into the capital stack before the next local hearing or warehouse draw, or carry idle debt through the Nov. 3, 2026 ballot window.

Luxor Energy and Bentaus throttled a single Nvidia B200 in Texas to roughly 25% draw in half a second with no failed jobs, a mining-born flexible-load pattern that can shave scarcity windows if customers accept rare, transparent latency. Governor Greg Abbott has flagged more than 474 GW of interconnection requests, about 90% datacenter-linked; Vox reports his pause screens grid-supplied approvals and leaves on-site natural gas paths open, so private generation and behind-the-meter designs keep moving while Batch Zero sorts the rest.

SLB's $4.1B Kelvion purchase targets heat rejection and waterless options as racks climb past 100 kW, with combined 2026 revenue aimed at $2B and 2 GW-plus cumulative delivered capacity. QumulusAI tripled GPUs to 3,088 and signed $169.7M in new contracts, yet CEO Michael Maniscalco says the bind is powered space ready on customer clocks, not chips or capital; modular 1 to 3 MW blocks and Crusoe-style prefab are the speed answer.

Bottom line: pair curtailment contracts, private generation, and thermal integration to the same milestone dates as interconnection filings, or miss batches while carrying unenergized GPUs.

El Paso Water pegs Meta's Northeast El Paso campus at 400,000 to 500,000 gallons average daily use against a 2.5 million gallon daily cap, on a system that pumped 108 million gallons daily last fiscal year. Hinojosa's nullify language sets a lower political threshold than that contract math without defining the cutoff, and Meta's city-county tax package from 2023 still stands outside Abbott's ERCOT-facing review.

SLB's Kelvion package adds waterless and hybrid rejection gear aimed at water-constrained counties where open towers draw opposition. Rural conversion pressure continues: Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller warns paved farmland does not return, with Project Matador, Project Pacifico, and Project Meta cited at 16,000-plus acres combined; that collision stays political for operators who skip offset and benefit terms at filing.

Bottom line: lock closed-loop or waterless design, metered caps, and written offsets before the next county vote, or inherit contract and campaign risk on the same site.