The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the state's main power grid, said it plans to complete the governor's data center audit by December.
ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) provided an update on the data center audit during a commission meeting Thursday.
Last week, ERCOT said it planned to verify information submitted by about 250 to 300 large energy consumers included in "Batch Zero" — the first group of data centers and other large energy consumers to be brought onto the Texas power grid under new standards approved by ERCOT earlier this year.
ERCOT will also collect “community impact information,” as outlined in the governor’s directive. The state’s power grid operators will request this information from both large energy consumers eligible for Batch Zero and medium-sized energy consumers, which are requesting between 25 and 75 megawatts of power. As of April, ERCOT identified 157 medium-sized energy consumers, such as data centers and cryptocurrency miners, looking to connect to the grid.
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"It’s a tremendous amount of information that’s going to have to come back into ERCOT," ERCOT Senior Vice President Chad Seely said at the commission meeting Thursday. "So as we look at the controls, we’re looking from the technology side too [and] how to make this more efficient."
The governor is requiring the PUCT and ERCOT to evaluate new data centers’ energy and water usage, along with any government assistance or tax incentives they receive. The agencies must also collect information about these facilities’ ownership and impact on nearby communities.
"At the end of the day, we should be able to ingest all this information, analyze it and come back with some key reasonable findings for the commission for the legislature and the governor’s office," Seely said.
Data centers under construction that have already been approved to connect to the ERCOT power grid are not included in the governor’s moratorium. The pause also does not include data centers that are using their own power generation and don’t need to connect to the grid. Additionally, data centers in parts of Texas that are not a part of the ERCOT grid are not subject to the moratorium.
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