ERCOT (Texas)

Queue figures updated October 2026 from ERCOT's September 2026 interconnection queue report. Existing and planned gas are from EIA-860M, August 2026.

ERCOT is the market where the interconnection queue is the clearest supply signal. It is energy-only and merchant, so developers commit through the queue, and a signed, near-term queue position reflects a real merchant commitment. Read the ERCOT gas queue as three different numbers, not one:

• 79.1 GW total queued gas nameplate, the headline study-request figure, across 139 projects.
• ~20 GW completion-weighted queued gas, weighting each project by the observed rate at which gas at its stage has historically been built (all owners, not merchant-only).
• 10.3 GW signed, near-term merchant floor: 19 projects with an executed interconnection agreement, a merchant developer, and requested operation by 2028.

The 10.3 GW floor is 13 percent of the 79.1 GW nameplate, and it sits with fewer than twenty interconnecting entities and fewer parent companies. The ~20 GW figure weights the whole queue by observed completion rates: a signed agreement builds about 60 percent of the time and in-study gas about 15. It estimates how much queued gas will actually be built, of any owner, not a set any single buyer can assemble.

All three numbers grew between the June and September 2026 reports: nameplate from 69.7 to 79.1 GW, the completion-weighted figure from about 17 to about 20 GW, and the signed, near-term merchant floor from 8.8 to 10.3 GW. The additions are mainly two plants that signed interconnection agreements in July and August 2026, about 1 GW in the South zone and about 0.5 GW in the Coastal zone; two small West Texas projects left the set.

The signed, near-term gas is concentrated in place: about half sits in the West zone (the Permian corridor), and almost none is behind the DFW load pocket, where much of the demand wants to be, so firm power in ERCOT depends as much on location as on supply.

For a buyer, ERCOT is the market where you can strike a bilateral merchant offtake at speed on the supply side, though a large load still needs ERCOT's approval to energize (see below). The screened pool is thin and countable, so procurement runs as origination against named developers, not as sourcing against a clearing price.

Large loads: new data center energizations paused

On August 3, 2026, following a directive from Governor Abbott, ERCOT paused approvals to energize new data centers and crypto mining facilities of 75 MW or more, and paused its Batch Zero study of large loads. The energization pause runs until a verification and audit of the loads in Batch Zero and a community impact review are complete, and ERCOT will file both reports with the PUCT by December 10, 2026. ERCOT has not yet set a new timeline for the study.

ERCOT sent conditional classifications to transmission providers on September 3, 2026: 204 projects totaling 66.4 GW as base load, 158 projects as studied load (127.9 GW in ERCOT's summary, 125.4 GW in its chart), and 373 projects totaling 302.2 GW excluded. Final inclusion follows the audit in December.

For a data center in Texas, this adds a regulatory clock to the interconnection clock. In our reading, it raises the value of on-site generation that can run the campus off the grid until ERCOT approves the connection. Bringing your own generation does not skip the line once the site connects to ERCOT: eleven Batch Zero projects that bring their own generation are in the same review. See The Plant That Outlives the Bridge.

Method

The 10.3 GW figure is a strict merchant screening result. The ~20 GW estimate's completion rates are computed from LBNL project-level outcomes, and it is not a measure of merchant-only supply. Neither is an ERCOT classification. The method is set out, on the June 2026 report, in the ERCOT gas queue reconciliation.

Sources: ERCOT Generator Interconnection Status report, September 2026 (published October 1, 2026); ERCOT Board of Directors, Item 14, Batch Zero Update, September 14 to 15, 2026 (https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2026/09/11/14-Batch-Zero-Update.pdf); ERCOT Market Notice M-A080326-01, August 3, 2026.