The audit outruns the pause
ERCOT let its own August 31 Batch Zero date pass without setting another, the connection pause is reported to lapse on November 4 before the audit that justified it finishes, and Anthropic booked $35 billion of capacity at Hut 8's Beacon Point.
ERCOT let its own date pass. Market Notice M-A080326-03, issued August 31, says the grid operator needs more time to validate the data before issuing the conditional Batch Zero classifications it had intended to send transmission and distribution providers that day. No new date is given. It is the second date ERCOT has moved on Batch Zero since August 7.
The pause may run out before the work it was ordered for. Coverage published September 3 reports that Abbott's pause on connecting new data centers lapses on November 4, the day after the general election, a date attributed to the governor's Democratic opponent rather than to his office or the PUCT. ERCOT has told lawmakers its audit finishes in late November or early December. Inside Climate News reported the same day that no Texas regulator holds a central list of data center operators, and that the gap is slowing the audit.
The money did not wait for any of it. Anthropic will pay Lambda $35 billion over six years for capacity at Hut 8's Beacon Point in Nueces County, where Nvidia holds the lease, with first energization expected in the first quarter of 2027. Nscale closed $1.85 billion of term loans against the Barstow campus it leases from Ionic Digital. Bitdeer paid about $100 million in cash for 200 acres at Rockdale.
Locally the answer hardened. Prosper's zoning commission voted 7-0 on September 1 to recommend denying White Rose Partners' $580 million campus, which the Town Council takes up on September 8. North Richland Hills removed data centers from the uses permitted by right, and two Red Oak residents sued their city over an 800-acre approval.
ERCOT let August 31 pass and set no new date.
A date that does exist is October 6, and it is about curtailment.
The pause has a reported end date, and it lands before the audit does.
Nobody has a list of who the operators are.
Reuters put the gap between requests and permits on the record.
The industry does not have one position on the pause.
The Senate water committee heard the industry and named a target.
Two counts of Texas data centers came out this week, and neither is a government register.
The industry started spending against the politics.
Dallas found out it has 23 data centers and no zoning class for them.
North Richland Hills took by-right away.
Brownsville is the second Cameron County city working on a moratorium.
Prosper's zoning commission voted 7-0 against Project Tomahawk, and the council decides.
Red Oak's opposition went to court.
Nscale signed a robotics customer at Barstow and borrowed against the campus in the same week.
Bitdeer bought the land under its next Rockdale phase for cash.
SB Energy filed to go public and disclosed 1.7 GW nobody was tracking.
An outside directory put numbers on Denton that Core Scientific has not.
Colovore's Hutto building is registered at $280 million, and it sits outside Austin's reach.
A $687.1 million loan on a Carrollton data center went past its maturity date.
Someone is selling oilfield water to a West Texas campus.
A conference panel put the demand at 125 percent on top of the ERCOT peak.
Sep 3Nscale signs Figure to a $3.5B compute deal, with the first GPUs going to its Barstow campus ↗PR Newswire
Sep 2Colovore registers a 192,694 sq ft Hutto data center with TDLR at $280 million ↗TDLR
Sep 1Bitdeer buys 200 acres near Rockdale for about $100 million in cash, for AI and HPC development ↗GlobeNewswire
Sep 1Anthropic books $35B of Lambda capacity at Hut 8's Beacon Point, with Nvidia holding the lease ↗The Energy Mag
Aug 29An outside directory puts Denton at 253,000 H100-equivalents on B200s and has the campus heading to 282 MW ↗Epoch AI
Sep 3A Datacloud panel in Austin puts data center demand at 125% on top of the ERCOT peak ↗Capacity Global
Sep 2ERCOT sets an October 6 workshop on the mandatory curtailment rules SB 6 created for large loads ↗ERCOT
Sep 2The Texas Tribune's data center lookup maps 596 sites, 14 of them not on the map in June ↗Texas Tribune
Sep 1Data center developers split openly over the Texas grid pause at a Bisnow conference ↗CRE Daily
Sep 1Reuters puts Texas data center interconnection requests above 474 GW, and 20 of more than 100 proposed sites with permits applied for ↗BNN Bloomberg (Reuters)
Aug 31ERCOT tests connected large loads and puts AI tools into its own grid studies ↗Data Center Frontier
Sep 3Nscale closes $1.85B of term loans against the Barstow campus, part of a $3B two-site raise ↗Nscale
Aug 31SB Energy files to go public and discloses a 1.7 GW-IT pipeline in Borden and Scurry Counties alongside its Milam site ↗SB Energy
Sep 4Super PACs tied to OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta put more than $8.8M into Texas races ↗Communications Today
Sep 4Texas Senate Scrutinizes Data Center Water Usage ↗Holland & Knight
Sep 3Abbott's grid connection pause for new data centers is set to lapse on November 4, his Democratic opponent says ↗Honolulu Star-Advertiser (AP)
Sep 3A Dallas council committee is briefed on 23 data centers worth $1.5B as five members press for a dedicated zoning category ↗D Magazine
Sep 3Texas has no central list of data center operators, and regulators say that is slowing the audit ↗Inside Climate News
Sep 3North Richland Hills strips data centers of by-right zoning and sends every one to a public hearing ↗City of North Richland Hills
Sep 2The Texas water survey that covers data centers is mandatory, and the 2025 response rate was about 17 percent ↗Texas Water Development Board
Sep 1Brownsville's city commission workshops a data center moratorium of up to 180 days ↗City of Brownsville
Sep 1Prosper's zoning commission votes 7-0 to recommend denying White Rose Partners' Project Tomahawk ↗Community Impact
Sep 1Two Red Oak residents sue the city over the zoning and annexation vote for an 800-acre data center campus ↗CBS News Texas
Sep 1Texas senators aim to tighten data center water rules in 2027, and one names Beacon Data Centers a "bad actor" ↗Community Impact
Aug 31Prosper's zoning panel puts White Rose Partners' Project Tomahawk back on its agenda after pulling it for review ↗CBS News Texas
You’re reading The Load Zone, the weekly Texas AI data center news wire from the Texas AI Data Center Intelligence Hub. Items that meet the intelligence bar are promoted into the Intelligence →.