Texas’ grid authority, The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), experienced a 270% surge in large load interconnection requests in 2025, according to an ERCOT Board of Director’s presentation.
This increase has bumped ERCOT’s large load capacity queue to approximately 226 GW.
Data center projects comprise 72.9% of the 225.816 GW currently tracked in the interconnection queue. Cryptocurrency mining facilities represent 8.8% of these requests, while projects combining data centers and crypto mining make up another 1.2%. The remaining requests come from hydrogen production and industrial facilities.
ERCOT officials noted the rapid pace of these requests. Large load demand seeking interconnection by 2030 grew by 142 gigawatts in 2025 alone.
Many of these individual interconnection requests exceed 1 gigawatt per site. Both transmission infrastructure and resource adequacy will determine how quickly these large loads can connect and ramp up operations, the report states.
On the supply side, ERCOT’s generation interconnection queue currently has 1,999 active requests totaling 432 gigawatts.
Solar and battery storage resources dominate this pipeline, accounting for 77% of the total generation capacity seeking interconnection at158 GW and 176 GW, respectively. Natural gas generation requests have also risen, increasing from 26 gigawatts in October 2024 to 48 gigawatts currently.
The report notes that transmission planning activity has intensified to match this grid growth.
ERCOT reviewed more than double the number of transmission projects in 2025 compared to the previous year. As of October 31, the authority endorsed transmission projects totaling $3.67 billion for 2025. This figure compares to $3.785 billion in endorsed projects for the full year of 2024.
