Texas Hyperscalers Bypass Grid as ERCOT Forecasts Hit 367 GW

The week's arc is the forecast itself: Monday opened with Framatome's Tony Robinson telling a TCU audience ERCOT projects 218 GW of peak demand by 2031, and by Friday the RTO's high-side scenario of 367 GW by 2032 was being sent back as unrealistic. Between those two numbers, the Public Utility Commission of Texas voted 5-0 to bless the first direct wind-farm-to-datacenter connection on the ERCOT grid, DataBank closed a $2 billion construction loan, and Microsoft added a 900 MW Crusoe-built gas plant to the Abilene complex. The queue isn't theoretical anymore. It's the product.

Bypass Becomes the Base Case

Self-supply moved from hedge to default in five trading days. The receipts:

• •Crusoe's 29-unit GE Vernova aeroderivative order, nearly 1 GW, anchoring Monday's BYOP thesis
• •Microsoft joining Oracle and OpenAI at Abilene's 2.1 GW Stargate campus with its own 900 MW behind-the-meter plant, per Friday's Construction Dive read
• •DataBank's $2B MUFG-led financing for 180 MW at Red Oak, accelerating delivery 18 months because power was already locked, covered Wednesday
• •The PUCT's unanimous wind-direct-connect approval Friday, the cleanest signal yet that Texas regulators are sorting which bypass models count

The binding constraint isn't capital. GE Vernova's turbine backlog stretches into 2029, switchgear lead times run 40-plus weeks per Hut 8's Brennan Church, and Baird's Justin Hauke counted 25 project cancellations in 2025 against six in 2024. Fermi America is the cautionary file: a 69% stock decline since October's IPO, CEO Toby Neugebauer out, and satellite imagery showing no dirt moved at Project Matador, all unpacked Tuesday. Permits aren't projects.

Community Process Is the New Permit

Readers clicked hardest on Wednesday's moratorium roundup, and the week explained why. Oklahoma City voted unanimously for a moratorium through end of 2026. Port Washington, Wisconsin blocked future TIF districts 2-to-1. Tom Green County and Johnson County commissioners passed parallel resolutions demanding Austin write standards before more projects land. Texas Rep. James Frank threatened to ask Gov. Abbott to halt the Three Way Road project in Archer County absent interruptible-load and closed-loop water commitments.

NDAs are now the friction cost, not the shield. El Paso learned about Meta's 35-year tax abatement after the fact. A University of Mary Washington study found 25 of 31 Virginia datacenters used local-government NDAs. Rep. LaMonica McIver introduced a federal site-selection transparency bill Friday. The developers writing water offsets, road agreements, and benefit terms into sheets before the town hall keep moving. The rest inherit the rules.

What to Watch

• •Susquehanna River Basin Commission hearing April 23 on Three Mile Island restart withdrawals; the methodology travels
• •Maine Gov. Mills's signature on the 18-month, 20 MW-plus moratorium, and whether New Jersey's S680 hourly clean-power matching gets PJM company
• •Wisconsin DNR's determination on whether one-hour NOx peaks govern Vantage's 87 MW of Port Washington diesel backups
• •ERCOT's revised load forecast post-367 GW pushback, and which large-load applications the PUCT fast-tracks first