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The Texas Energy Reference Design: Stress-Testing Load Growth Challenges for an AI Century
How Texas is taking on reliability, cost and speed at once as AI demand pours onto its grid.
CSIS
In brief
Arushi explains how Texas, with its own grid and its own rules, has become the leading destination for AI-driven electricity demand, and how it is tackling reliability, cost and speed all at once while Washington grapples with them. She covers the Texas themes that resonate nationwide, gas for tail risk and solar for affordability; the question of who pays for the transmission data centers need; and ERCOT’s new batch process for connecting the projects that are ready first, including flexible loads. She offers these choices as a reference design for load growth across the country.
Key points
- 01Gas for tail risk and solar for affordability: Texas themes that resonate nationwide.
- 02Who pays for transmission, including proposed fees and financial commitments for data center developers.
- 03A batch process that connects the projects ready first, as a national blueprint.
