ERCOT Large-Load Interconnection Requests, Mostly Data Centers (GW)

## What this measures

The total capacity, in gigawatts, of large loads (75 MW and up at one site: data centers, crypto mining, industrial plants, hydrogen) that ERCOT is tracking as seeking to connect to the Texas grid, at each snapshot ERCOT publishes. It covers every stage, from requests with no studies submitted to loads approved to energize.

## Why it matters

It is the most direct public measure of data center power demand heading for one U.S. grid. ERCOT says data centers make up most of it (about 87% in its April 2026 update to the Texas Senate). It grew from under 20 GW in 2022 to several hundred gigawatts in 2026, several times ERCOT's all-time peak demand.

## How to read it

Higher means more load asking to connect. Read it as interest, not demand: the large majority of requests have not submitted studies, and many are duplicates of the same project shopping for sites. ERCOT's observed operational large load is a small fraction of it.

## What it does not say

Not all of it will be built, and timing is uncertain. ERCOT's counting changed over time: the horizon of in-service dates was extended (to 2028 in July 2024, later to 2033), and in March 2026 the count jumped as a wave of new requests entered ahead of ERCOT's move to batch studies. The snapshots are not evenly spaced before 2025.

## How it's built

Read by hand from ERCOT's own documents, each value with its document: the Large Load Interconnection Status updates to ERCOT committees (2023–2026, "Large Load Queue – Past N Months" charts), ERCOT Board system planning updates (December 2024 to March 2025 totals) and the Monthly Operational Overview's "Current Large Load Interconnection Queue" table (from March 2026, the table's total). The values and their sources are in scripts/power/ercot-large-load.ts. The August 2026 overview dropped the table as ERCOT moved large loads into its Batch Zero study process, so new points arrive when ERCOT publishes a new queue total, and the series can lag by more than a month.

## Source

ERCOT, Large Load Interconnection Status updates, Board system planning updates and Monthly Operational Overviews (ercot.com). ERCOT's terms: raw data on the public portions of ercot.com "may be used, reproduced, and redistributed in compilations, charts, and analyses".