Behind-the-Meter Power Overtakes the ERCOT Queue

The queue stopped being the plan this week, and the biggest tenants stopped waiting for it.

The Grid Is Full, So Capital Goes Behind the Meter

The math is unforgiving: ERCOT's interconnection backlog sits past 300 GW, and Lawrence Berkeley counts more than 2,060 GW seeking connection nationwide, double the country's installed capacity. Serious buyers are financing their own way around it.

• •Microsoft launched its 2 GW Pecos campus on dedicated onsite gas under a 20-year PPA with Energy Forge One, a Chevron subsidiary, serving load without an ERCOT interconnection on day one.
• •National Grid put $1.75 billion into Joulent on the strength of one project: the 2.67 GW Project Kilby in Reeves County, feeding a Microsoft campus.
• •Brookfield scaled its Bloom Energy fuel-cell partnership fivefold to $25 billion, packaging capital, power, and sequencing into one financeable product.

That's the thesis from FERC's show-cause orders to six grid operators: self-supply moved from differentiator to standard. ERCOT's batch zero rule, effective July 11, sorts 445+ GW of pending load into base, studied, and excluded tiers, rewarding commercial proof over announced plans. The catch: shared interconnection buys speed but binds you to grid obligations, as PUCT staff signaled in the Crusoe-Ensign fight over Goodnight 1's single 265.5 MW point of interconnection.

Texas Is Pricing True Cost, Not Closing the Door

Gov. Greg Abbott hardened his terms at a Bullard campaign stop: no new rural residential-adjacent builds, no sector tax breaks, and developers funding their own power, water, and infrastructure. His June 10 directive to PUCT's Thomas Gleeson and ERCOT's Pablo Vegas told both to keep costs off residential ratepayers. The mechanism isn't built yet; it lands in the 2027 Legislature.

Contrast the states that froze. New York sent Gov. Hochul a 12-month moratorium layered with an 18-month environmental study; Virginia's 1.1 cent/kWh levy went live July 1 at up to $600 million a year; Oregon's POWER Act forces a 29% rate hike on large loads. San Marcos became the first Texas city to attempt an outright ban, a 4-3 vote Sen. Paul Bettencourt is already challenging, while two Texas counties lost bans to legal action. Texas keeps its queue open and its rules negotiable.

Water Becomes a Permit Condition

Scarcity moved from talking point to gating factor. Diode Ventures is scouting a Henderson County site drawing up to 5 million gallons daily near Cedar Creek Lake, which supplies 70 North Texas cities. Above the Ogallala, groundwater has fallen 200+ feet beyond recharge. The state still doesn't track its 248 planned projects, and Valar Atomics paired a helium-cooled microreactor with Nvidia Blackwell in Utah to sidestep cooling water entirely.

What to Watch

• •July 10 and July 24: batch zero filing deadlines; where a project sits determines who energizes on schedule.
• •July 11: batch zero takes effect, replacing serial study.
• •FERC's 60-day clock on the six grid operators to defend or rewrite large-load connection rules.
• •The San Marcos ordinance and Bettencourt's HB 2559 challenge, which will set the home-rule ceiling for every watching city.