More than 220 gigawatts of large load projects have requested connection to the Texas electric grid by 2030, with data centers comprising over 70 percent of demand, raising concerns among energy experts about a speculative bubble.
The interconnection requests tracked by ERCOT represent more than twice Texas’ record peak summer demand of approximately 85 gigawatts in 2025, according to ERCOT’s December 2025 board presentation.
Scale of Demand
ERCOT received 225 new large load interconnection requests in 2025 through mid-November, compared to just 152 requests during the entire 2022-2024 period combined. The requests represent a 270 percent increase in megawatt demand since January 2025.
Data centers account for approximately 73 percent of the 226 gigawatts seeking interconnection, with many individual sites exceeding 1 gigawatt each.
Expert Skepticism
“It definitely looks, smells, feels—is acting like a bubble,” said Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and founder of energy consulting firm IdeaSmiths. “The top line numbers are almost laughable.”
More than half of the requests, representing about 128 gigawatts, have not yet submitted studies for ERCOT review. Another 90 gigawatts are either under review or have had planning studies approved.
“There’s just no way we can physically put this much steel in the ground to match those numbers. I don’t even know if China could do it that fast,” Rhodes said.
Beth Garza, former director of ERCOT’s independent market monitor from 2014 to 2019, called the figures “crazy big.” “There’s not enough stuff to serve that much load on the equipment side or the consumption side,” she said.
Regulatory Response
Texas enacted legislation requiring developers to pay $100,000 for initial project studies and demonstrate site control through ownership or lease. Developers must also disclose whether they have proposed the same project elsewhere in Texas.
The Texas Public Utility Commission has proposed requiring data centers to pay $50,000 security per megawatt of peak power, totaling at least $50 million for a gigawatt-scale facility.
“The serious developers with long-term contracts signed with anchor tenants, they’re going to be willing to put that money down,” Rhodes said. “More speculative developers will likely drop out of the line.”
Actual Connections
The number of projects that have actually connected to the grid or received ERCOT approval totals only around 7.5 gigawatts—equivalent to nearly eight large nuclear plants.
“We could comfortably grow 8 gigawatts of data centers,” Rhodes said. Texas might accommodate 20 to 30 gigawatts of data center demand by 2030, he estimated.
Infrastructure Investment Risk
Michael Hogan, senior advisor at the Regulatory Assistance Project with over four decades in the electric industry, said “we know it’s not all real. The question is how much is real.”
The risk lies in building power plants, transmission lines, and transformers for data centers that may not materialize. Natural gas plant construction costs have more than doubled over the past five years, Rhodes noted.
“When the bubble bursts, who pays is going to depend on how much steel has been moved,” Rhodes said. “It’s kind of like buying your house at the top of the market.”
In Texas’ deregulated market, investors typically bear the cost of building new power plants, providing some consumer protection. By contrast, residential electricity prices in Illinois rose about 20 percent year-over-year in September 2025, while Texas prices increased just 5 percent.
