Texas Froze Data Center Permits. The Questionnaires Are Due October 12.

Every data center seeking 25 megawatts or more from the Texas grid must file its answers to ERCOT's Data Center Impact request for information by Monday, October 12. The filing is the first hard deadline in a statewide audit that has frozen data center permitting at every Texas agency.

Gov. Greg Abbott directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT on August 3 to verify and audit every data center in the interconnection queue before any of them advanced. On September 21 he extended the order to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, halting the permits data center projects need, and barred any state agency from advancing data center regulatory approvals until the audits are obtained and reviewed. TCEQ owes the governor's office a compliance update by October 19. ERCOT's report is due no later than December 10.

The queue behind the freeze is large. ERCOT counts roughly 474 gigawatts of large-load interconnection requests, about 90 percent of it data centers and more than five times the grid's record peak demand. Its Batch Zero study process covers 204 gigawatts eligible for study, including about 300 data centers of 75 megawatts or larger. The request for information asks each developer about public financial assistance and tax benefits, grid dependence and on-site generation, water sources and consumption, cooling technology, noise, light and traffic, and ownership and controlling interests.

Seventeen large loads, mostly data centers, had already cleared ERCOT's stability assessment and were scheduled to come online this year, totaling about 6.6 gigawatts of peak demand. ERCOT has not approved their energization requests, and each must still finish verification, the audit and the community impact review. BloombergNEF estimated in August that the pause could delay 49.8 gigawatts of data center load, roughly a fifth of a 253-gigawatt national pipeline, and put $8 billion to $15 billion of revenue at risk through the first quarter of 2027.

That is where commercial electrical crews feel it. Switchgear lineups, medium-voltage feeders, substation terminations and commissioning sequences can be installed and tested on schedule, but a facility that cannot obtain an energization approval cannot reach the load-bank and startup work that carries the longest electrician hours. An ERCOT official said in August that the Batch Zero study would not be finished by April 9, 2027, the deadline then on the books.

Texas licensing rules did not change. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation's electrician rules in 16 Texas Administrative Code Chapter 73 adopted the 2026 National Electrical Code as the state electrical code effective September 1, 2026, and the PUCT's large-load rules under Senate Bill 6 carry a December 31 rulemaking deadline. Contractors staffing Texas data center work are holding crews against dates that now depend on a December filing rather than a construction schedule. The electrical scope is still coming. The audit sets the clock.