For most of the last twenty years, "can this site get power" was a question you answered with a phone call and a rough answer. For large industrial loads in Texas, that is over. There is now a formal queue, it is oversubscribed by a factor most people do not believe when they first hear it, and it has published dates you can put on a schedule.
That last part is the useful part. Wastewater capacity in this region is largely unpublished. Power, for once, is not.
What Batch Zero is
The PUCT approved ERCOT's large-load interconnection framework on June 18, 2026. Instead of studying each large-load request one at a time, ERCOT now groups qualified large projects into a single study, so it can assess total future demand across a batch at once rather than sequentially.
"Large load" means 75 MW and above. The dates ERCOT published:
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| August 2026 | Batch Zero applicants notified of project classification |
| Summer 2027 | Applications open for Batch 1 |
| Fall 2027 | Final statewide transmission plan published for all of Batch Zero |
| By 2030 | Majority of Batch Zero projects expected to be operational |
The framework also gives large customers two alternative paths to connection: build onsite generation, or accept curtailment during grid constraints. That is worth reading twice, because it converts a site attribute most people ignore into a priceable one.
The process was not assembled quietly. ERCOT reports it came out of more than 200 hours of live stakeholder discussion, workshops of roughly 500 participants, about 200 survey responses and more than 290 written comments. (ERCOT, June 18, 2026)
The statutory foundation underneath it is SB 6 from the 89th Legislature, authored by Senator King with Senator Schwertner as co-author, signed by the Governor on June 20, 2025 and effective immediately. Its caption covers planning for, interconnection and operation of, and costs related to serving certain electrical loads. (Texas Legislature Online)
The queue number, with the caveat it requires
The large-load request queue sitting behind Batch Zero is approximately 438,000 MW, with data centers representing roughly 89% of that demand.
For scale: ERCOT's all-time peak demand was 85,508 MW, set on August 10, 2023.
So the request pipeline is somewhere north of five times the largest amount of power the grid has ever actually delivered at once. ERCOT's separate long-term load forecast, released April 15, 2026 and filed in PUCT Project 58777, projects 367,790 MW of demand by 2032.
ERCOT attaches a caveat to that forecast and it should never be published without it: the figure is a preliminary snapshot for planning purposes, not a prediction of actual future construction or demand realization. ERCOT President and CEO Pablo Vegas framed it as a response to growth that is "reshaping how large load demand is identified and incorporated into long-term planning." (ERCOT, April 15, 2026)
Most of that 438,000 MW will never be built. Speculative requests are cheap and projects die. But the number is still the most important thing on this page, because of what it does to everyone else in line.
Every large-load request is now competing in a queue. That is the change. Not scarcity of power in the abstract, but a rationing mechanism with a published order.
What is being built near Central Texas
Two LCRA transmission projects are worth tracking specifically.
Bell County East to Big Hill, 765 kV. A new line from LCRA TSC's planned Big Hill Substation in Schleicher County to Oncor's Bell County East Switch. It crosses fourteen counties, Williamson among them. Roughly 199 miles between endpoints, with the application filed proposing 122 alternative routes ranging from 214 to 244 miles.
The regulatory timeline is the part to circle. The PUC application was filed March 26, 2026 as Docket No. 59475, the intervention deadline was April 27, 2026, and a PUC decision is expected in September 2026, which is this month. Estimated energization is summer 2030. LCRA has not published a cost. (LCRA)
If you own land in the routing corridor, easement acquisition is the near-term event. If you are underwriting industrial in Williamson County on a 2030-plus horizon, a materially stronger backbone is the medium-term one.
Hays Energy to Kendall corridor upgrade. A roughly 60-mile corridor rebuilt across ten individual projects, from the Hays Energy Substation near I-35 in San Marcos to the Kendall Substation near Comfort, spanning Hays, Comal and Kendall counties. Most segments were complete as of April 2026. Two remain: Boerne Split to Welfare, concluding January 2027, and Kendall to Welfare, ending September 2027. (LCRA)
One gap worth naming: Austin Energy's peak demand, load growth projections and large-load interconnection policy are not published on its public system pages. We can tell you the utility covers a 437-square-mile service area with 12,337 miles of distribution line, 633.5 miles of transmission line and 81 substations. We cannot tell you how it intends to serve a large load, and if you are siting one inside its territory that is a question to put directly to the utility rather than infer.
What this changes about diligence
Ask which batch the site is in. Not whether power is "available." Whether there is a large-load interconnection request associated with the site, whether it qualified, and which batch it landed in. A request that is not in a batch is not getting served on a knowable timeline. This question now belongs on the same page as the floodplain question.
Circle fall 2027. When ERCOT publishes the Batch Zero statewide transmission plan, it will in effect publish a map of where large industrial load can be served in Texas. Maps like that move land prices. Reading it in the first week rather than the first year is a real and fairly cheap edge.
Price gas access and onsite generation capability as land attributes. ERCOT's own framework names onsite generation and curtailment tolerance as paths to connection. That means a site with gas access, or the physical room and permitting posture to host generation, is worth more than an otherwise identical site without it, independent of what the grid can deliver to either. Most land comps do not reflect this yet.
Do not confuse a queue position with a project. Nearly nine in ten megawatts in that queue are data centers, and the policy environment for data centers in Central Texas is turning underneath them, city by city, on water grounds. If a land basis depends on a data center buyer, the interconnection queue is only one of two clocks running.
That second clock is worth its own piece, and it is the one we would look at next if a client's exit depends on this buyer pool.
If you are underwriting industrial land in Central Texas and want a second read on where a site actually sits in this process, get in touch.
This post is general information about infrastructure and development in Central Texas. It is not legal, engineering or investment advice, and it is not a representation about any specific parcel. Interconnection rules, queue figures and transmission schedules change. Verify every date and figure against ERCOT, the PUCT or the utility before relying on it.