ERCOT’s first batch study of large-load requests, run with an audit of which requests are real. Chapter 6.
From The AI Compute Race. Read the book
Where the book uses it
- Chapter 6 — Firm, Around-the-Clock
Where the electricity comes from: grid queues, transformers, turbines and the firm power a datacenter needs every hour of the year, on calendars the buildout does not control.
Where the record uses it
- Scorecard indicator ERCOT raw queue / live load
Also discussed in
Sources that use it
- ERCOT, “Assessing the Grid,” presentation to the Texas Senate, 29 July 2026 (large-load requests 474.7 GW, 420.8 GW datacenters; 205 GW initially eligible under Batch Zero; 10.2 GW meeting section requirements; 3.2 GW authorized to energize; the figures are chart-embedded, not running text: slide 6 data table, 2026 column — Section 9.4/9.5 requirements met 10.2 GW, approved to energize but not operational 3.2 GW, observed energized 5.9 GW (5.8 in 2025), total 474.7 GW projected for 2032–33; slide 6 pie — data centers 90.2 percent, 420,812 MW; slide 10 — “Approximately 205 GW of Large Load is eligible for inclusion in Batch Zero based on existing studies”; key takeaway “approximately 474 GW of Large Loads seeking interconnection, of which ~90% are data centers”; slide 10 is titled “PRELIMINARY Overview of Batch Zero Eligibility” and its note reads “The following data is preliminary and only reflects eligibility for inclusion in Batch Zero. ERCOT will review all application materials and make final determinations … on or before August 7. ERCOT will communicate the results by September 2” — the data as of 28 July 2026; slide 6’s six status rows are a partition of the 61.1 GW projected for 2026 (32.8 + 7.5 + 1.5 + 10.2 + 3.2 + 5.9), so the 10.2 GW is not a subset of the 205 GW). In the Sources
- ERCOT, “Batch Zero Update,” Board of Directors item 14 for the meeting of 14–15 September 2026, posted 11 September 2026 (conditional classifications issued on 3 September under market notice M-A080326-04, whose text warns that “Failure to satisfy any applicable condition may disqualify the Large Load from Batch Zero”: 204 projects and 66.4 GW conditionally in the base case, 158 projects in the studied case at 127.9 GW on the cover and 125.4 GW on slide 6, a discrepancy the paper does not reconcile, 362 projects in all; slide 6: “This chart omits excluded load (302.2 GW, 373 projects)”; the Eligibility Verification Report and the Community Impact Review Report both due 10 December 2026; the original study-completion date of 9 April 2027 carried with its impact “TBD”; the counts are of projects, not of requests, so no survival rate follows from them; slide 4: “ERCOT has paused the energization of new Large Load data centers and crypto mining facilities until the completion of the verification and audit and community impact review”). In the Sources
- ERCOT market notices of 3 and 21 August 2026 (Batch Zero classifications paused under the governor’s audit directive; limited exceptions granted; conditional classifications to issue 31 August; the second notice, M-A080326-02, is dated 21 August and reports the commission’s order of 20 August in PUCT Project No. 59142; the conditional classifications were issued on 3 September 2026 under M-A080326-04, not on 31 August as the 3 August notice planned, ERCOT’s Batch Zero Update of 11 September 2026 being the source). In the Sources
- ERCOT, “PUCT Approves ERCOT’s Batch Zero Process for Connecting Large Electricity Users While Protecting System Reliability for Texans,” news release, 18 June 2026 (“ERCOT is tracking more than 438,000 MW of large load requests, nearly 89 percent from data centers alone”; the batch process groups qualified large projects of 75 MW and greater into a single study). In the Sources
- Public Utility Commission of Texas, Project No. 59142, Review of ERCOT’s Interconnection Processes for Large Loads, item 52: ERCOT, “ERCOT Updates – Good Cause Exceptions for PGRR 145, Batch Zero Verification and Audit Process, and Community Impact Review Process,” filed 20 August 2026 (16 pp.; ERCOT “has paused approvals to energize large load data centers and crypto facilities until the Batch Zero eligibility verification is complete”, item 52, p. 9; on 3 August ERCOT paused the Batch Zero study and approvals to energize data centers and crypto facilities of 75 MW or greater, “Large loads: 75 MW or greater”, item 52, p. 4, the Commission’s order of the same day, item 53, p. 2, reciting the pause of the study “of loads that are 75 MW or more” until the verification and audit are complete; conditional classification of large loads by 31 August in place of the 7 August deadline, item 52, p. 6; the Batch Zero Eligibility Verification Report, “summarizing the results”, to be filed by ERCOT on 10 December and a Commission open meeting on 17 December, item 52, p. 12; until 11 September 2026 this row carried “5,409 requests totalling 474 GW” — the filing holds neither figure, the 474 GW is the ERCOT Senate deck’s, and the 5,409 is in no opened document; the Commission’s order granting the good-cause exceptions is item 53 of the same day, 20 August 2026, 4 pp., the governing instrument, item 52 being ERCOT’s request; item 54 is a consultant’s comment, not an extension; item 55, ERCOT’s update of 11 September 2026, confirms the 10 December filings and the 17 December open meeting “proceeding on schedule”; the market notice of 3 September, M-A080326-04, calls the classification “provisional”, and ERCOT’s board deck of 11 September uses both words, “provisional” on slide 4 and “conditional” on slides 1 and 5; the same deck, slide 4, puts the energization pause “until the completion of the verification and audit and community impact review”, a wider condition than item 52’s; later filings in the project have rows of their own, item 55 of 11 September 2026 and item 73 of 21 September 2026; the filed documents were read in this project’s public interchange, the PDF pages counted with the filing receipt as p. 1). In the Sources
And 4 more: search the Sources.
Related terms
From the glossary of The AI Compute Race.
How to cite this page
Dryburgh, Lee S. “Batch Zero.” In The AI Compute Race. DRYBURGH. https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/batch-zero (accessed 2026-11-01).
BibTeX
@misc{dryburgh-batch-zero-2026,
author = {Dryburgh, Lee S.},
title = {{Batch Zero}},
howpublished = {In \emph{The AI Compute Race}, DRYBURGH},
year = {2026},
url = {https://dryburgh.com/vol1/glossary/batch-zero},
note = {Accessed 2026-11-01}
}