[TX Gov.] Abbott Orders Comprehensive Data Center Audit Amid Surge in Texas Grid Requests

Gov. Greg Abbott has ordered state regulators to conduct a comprehensive verification and audit of all data centers advancing through the interconnection process before any additional projects are approved. Abbott said projects that fail to comply with state requirements, or with state law, must be denied connection to the Texas grid.

The Monday letter, addressed to the leaders of the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), cited “the failure of some data centers to comply with the PUC’s survey measuring water and power usage” as a reason for the new order.

“[ERCOT] is currently considering approximately 474 gigawatts of requests to connect to the Texas grid. That is more than five times Texas’ record peak electricity demand for ERCOT. Approximately 90 percent of the new power requests are data centers,” noted Abbott.

PUCT and ERCOT must also obtain additional information about each project, including the extent to which data centers are paying for themselves, providing their own power, utilizing their own water, and reducing impacts on neighboring properties.

The audit order comes after Abbott sent a letter in June directing the PUCT and ERCOT to “ensure everyday Texans are not burdened with the costs of infrastructure driven by data center expansion, and … residential electric bills are not negatively affected.”

In the same letter, Abbott also pledged to work with the Texas Legislature to ensure data centers’ power, water, and financial stresses—as well as “impacts on local communities”—are reduced for Texas residents.

Texas Railroad Commissioner Wayne Christian “applauded” Abbott’s order for an audit, stating that “no data center project should come at the expense of grid reliability or Texas’ natural resources.”

“We need a Texas plan for data centers, and that starts with getting the facts straight. We cannot manage what we have not measured,” stated Christian. “The information gathered through this process will give regulators and policymakers the tools they need to develop a Texas plan that keeps our state at the forefront of technological innovation while ensuring growth, accountability, and transparency.”

Texas has previously been ranked second in the nation for data center inventory. Recent polling has indicated that Texans oppose the construction of a data center in their community.

Abbott, who once championed the state as the “epicenter of AI development,” has recently called for reevaluating where data center projects are placed.

Why don’t they put these on the great lakes with winter cold and cold fresh water?

Good idea. You and I think alike.

I say build the data centers in north-central Alaska. They can cool it during the winter by blowing free cold air through the data center. Thus, the hard cooling demand is only in the summer.

And it's during the summer they can have free solar power almost all day. So their onsite power generation can be a hybrid of solar and hydrocarbon (i.e. natural gas fueled power plant). As long as the hydrocarbon plant is scalable (can turn up and down efficiently) then during the summer on sunny days their power plant has to run for only a small part of the day (the few dark hours of the night). That's pretty much how my decentralized solar for my home saves me money. In Alabama, the highest demand for power is on hot sunny days because that's when we run our A/C a lot. However, that's also when I get a lot of free solar power. Thus, the solar isn't enough to go off grid because I don't have enough solar and battery storage to power the home for multiple days in a row of rain. But those rainy days are days I don't use much power anyway (because rainy/cloudy days usually means mild temperature days), so I don't wind up pulling much power from the grid.

It seems to me that a data center in Alaska utilizing free cold air in the winter doesn't have to consume as much power in the winter as in the summer. In the summer is when it'd have to pump water for cooling -- I imagine a much more power intensive process than just blowing cold air in from outside. But it's in the summer that daylight in Alaska lasts a really long time -- good for solar power. By utilizing the free cold air in the winter (and thus not need much power, even though it's dark a long time in the winter and there's no free solar power), and utilizing free solar power in the summer, when they get lots of solar hours to offset the extra power consumption of pumping water for cooling -- their onsite hydrocarbon power station wouldn't have to work nearly as much as building data centers in much of the rest of the U.S.

Data Centers in TX
Dallas .......194 Wichita Falls 15 Colorado City 1 Kermit ........1
Amarillo ....23 Fort Stockton 3 Austin .......66
Houston .......51 McAllen ......4 San Antonio....72
El Paso ........8 Waco .............8 Pecos ........5
Abilene .......18 Lubbock ........4 Harlingen 3
Corpus Christi 3 Laredo ........3 Lufkin ........2
Odessa ........2 Garden City ....3 Pampa ........2
Tyler ..........2 San Angelo ......2 Sweetwater 2
Bay City ....1 Dickens ...........1 Brady ........1
Greenville ..1 Montgomery ..1 Andrews ........1
Big Lake ....2 Snyder ...........1 Wallis ........1
Brazoria ......1 Bryan ............1 Eagle Pass 1
Stratford .....1 Cameron ........1 The Woodlands 1
Nacogdoches 1 Big Spring ........1 Dumas .......1
McCamey .....1
Total Data Centers in TX: 521
There have been data centers for 50+ years. 521 were in TX in 2025. They had no complaints until 2026. No complaints in Blue states and cities. Not complaints in Red states and suburbs/rural counties.

Data centers hire few people, just like warehouses. Data Centers use a lot of water just like a car wash. Most of the water is recycled and it is not a big drain on the community or environment.

Who is suddenly driving data centers as a scare tactic issue in 2026? Behind the scenes, who is funding the scare tactics?

You guys are thinking like engineers instead of politicians. (Maybe you are engineers.)

Tell It Right, I would add that the waste heat could be used in the winter by the Alaskans for heating homes and business.

Thanks. Software engineer here. FReeper Lurker is right, though. Getting fiber optic cables (maybe in the Tbps range) to north Alaska would be a major pain.

I don't know about the feasibility of Jeepers' idea of reusing the heat from data centers to heat Alaskans' homes. One reason I suggested northern Alaska was the remoteness would avoid noise pollution. Somewhere that remote might not have anyone living nearby to reuse the heat. I guess it'd work for nearby living quarters for the workers.

I did similar things for my own home. I replaced my old natural gas water heater with a hybrid water heater. It's all electric -- the "hybrid" part is that it can use a built-in heat pump to heat the water tank or use normal electric heat strips. I almost always use it in heat pump mode (it runs at only 380W). There's an air duct going to the air intake of the water heater so that when it pulls in air, it's pulling in air from my attic. As it extracts the heat from the incoming air to put the heat to the water tank, the incoming air is often pretty warm or even hot (because my attic is hot most of the time here in Alabama). So the free heat source of the attic makes the water heater not have to run as long to get enough heat energy to heat the tank.

What about the air the water heater exports? It's cold air (because the water heater's heat pump extracted heat energy from the air to heat the water tank). During the warm half of the year, like it is now, I use that free cold air byproduct to help cool the home. The cold air falls to the floor of the closet that the water heater is in. In the floor is a new air register for my HVAC to pull in that free cold air and help spread it around the house. Thus, my home's variable speed heat pump and variable speed air handler can run in a lower speed mode (use less power) 2 or 3 extra hours per day. The cold air from the water heater isn't enough to cool the whole house on its own. But the HVAC uses less total power through the day thanks to the free cold air. When winter arrives and I don't want the fee cold air in the home, I open the water heater closet and flip to wye duct levers by the water heater. That directs the cold air byproduct to be blown to outdoors.

Stuff like that to lower my total power consumption, but still live the same comfortable lifestyle, was as important as the math on whether or not to get solar and, if so, how much. The same with charging the EV almost always only when there's free solar power. When the EV battery charge is topped off (max recommendation is 80% charged for local driving unless we need it charged to 100% for a long trip) means the range on the EV is about 230 miles. We usually drive it about 50 miles per day. So if we come home with over 100 miles range left, we plug into the EV the charger that's intermittently powered. Our solar inverters are currently configured to power a particular electrical panel only when the home battery stack is charged at least 80%. 80% charge on the home batteries is more than enough to power the home through the night and not have to pull from the grid. Any charge above that is considered power I can use and it's free (not adding to my power bill because that power won't be pulled through the meter). My wife is retired and I'm quasi-retired, often working from home when I do work. In other words, we often come home with the EV when it's still mid-day. Free sunny power -- the home battery stack is charged enough for the night -- excess solar power will charge the EV. Or maybe the intermittent charger isn't on yet, but will be later in the day. Or maybe it's on for a while but shuts off automatically when the home battery stack is below 80%. Either way, the system automatically charges or doesn't charge the EV based on if there's free power. Thus, 230 mile range of the EV and us driving it about 50 miles per day means we can have rainy weather for a few days in a row before we decide to quit waiting for free sunny power and charge the EV with the constantly powered charger (possibly pulling from the grid and adding to our power bill).

End result: We drive the EV about 18K miles per year just on home charged miles alone, my house is all electric and 2,300 sq ft, we're home a lot during the day and, thus, have to run the AC mid-day. Yet with all of that, our power bills average $80/month. This is because about 20% of the power we consume has to be pulled from the grid -- the rest of the power we consume comes from homemade power. No natural gas bill. And almost no gasoline expense (what little we drive the gas pickup).

I took out a loan (HELOC) to pay for all of the energy improvements, including the extra for the EV. (It was time to replace my wife's old gas crossover anyway, the EV crossover was more expensive than a gas crossover, so the difference was paid for with the HELOC.) The HELOC payment + power bill is less than what I would have been paying for power + natural gas bill + gasoline. But I consistently pay to the HELOC + power bill what I was paying for energy back in year 2019 (when energy costs were more reasonable in Trump's 3rd year, but before covid distorted energy costs). So I pay extra on the HELOC principal, paying it off a little sooner. My budget (the energy portion, including the HELOC payment) feels like it's still year 2019. The energy project basically took away the past 7 years' worth of energy cost inflation.

Assuming a 3% inflation rate on the energy costs I avoid (saving me more $'s next year, then more $'s after that, etc.), about year 2032 will be the breakeven point. That's when the balance left owed on the HELOC will be about the total cash flow savings from avoiding most of my energy costs since I started the energy project in year 2021. That's not counting the fact that saving on cash flow = that money staying in our Roth IRAs longer growing tax free. So our true break even point might be around year 2030. If the solar equipment and/or new and efficient home appliances and/or EV last longer than that it's gravy on the top.

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