⭐ Morning Briefing — September 8, 2026

(Latest updates through September 8, 2026)

Top Story: IREN's 2-gigawatt Sweetwater Hub became the first project this briefing has seen win a public ERCOT Batch Zero classification, conditionally designated Base Load this morning — a real signal that the state's post-audit sorting process is starting to produce individual outcomes, even as today's scheduled hearing on Westlake's contested Circle T data center was postponed and Hood County took up a data-center item of its own near Dinosaur Valley State Park.

📰 Today's News

1. ⚡ IREN's Sweetwater Hub Wins Texas's First Public Batch Zero Base-Load Call

IREN's 2 GW Sweetwater Hub in Nolan County — Sweetwater 1 (1,400 MW) and Sweetwater 2 (600 MW) — was conditionally classified as Base Load within ERCOT's Batch Zero interconnection-screening process, the company announced this morning via GlobeNewswire, with the news corroborated by StreetInsider, Stock Titan and Crypto Briefing.
Sweetwater 1's high-voltage substation was energized earlier this year, and construction continues on 300 MW of data center capacity, with initial delivery targeted for Q4 2027.
IREN said the hub is part of its broader, previously announced 5+ GW global development portfolio, and that additional large-scale IREN projects — not yet named — have also been included in Batch Zero.
ERCOT's classification remains conditional and subject to ongoing approval processes, per the company's own release; Base Load status is a screening designation, not a final interconnection agreement.

Today's Signal: Batch Zero was built to sort real, financed projects from speculative ones after this summer's classification deadlines; Sweetwater is the first individual project this briefing has seen publicly confirm which side of that line it landed on, months ahead of the December 10 audit-completion deadline this newsletter has been tracking.

2. ⚖️ The Westlake/Keller Data-Center Hearing Set for Today Has Been Delayed

Westlake's Circle T data center — a 1.1-million-square-foot, 87.9-acre PowerHouse project 506 feet from homes in Keller's Lakes at Marshall Ridge neighborhood — has been under a temporary restraining order since Aug. 17, after District Judge Kimberly Fitzpatrick blocked the Westlake Town Council from voting on a development agreement; she extended that TRO on Aug. 26 to allow more time to review evidence, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The TRO was set to expire at a hearing today, Sept. 8, where Fitzpatrick would rule on whether to keep it in place — but WFAA reported yesterday afternoon that the hearing "has been delayed," with no new date yet confirmed.
Keller's City Council has already passed a resolution opposing the project and authorizing legal action if Westlake moves forward, and open-records emails obtained by the Star-Telegram show the dispute has strained a previously close relationship between the two towns' mayors.
Until a new hearing date is set and a ruling issued, the TRO — and the freeze on any Westlake council vote — stays in place.

Today's Signal: Legal deadlines in this fight keep slipping rather than resolving — this is now the second time Fitzpatrick has extended the pause rather than ruling outright, and each delay buys both sides more time to negotiate rather than litigate to a final outcome.

3. 🗳️ An Appeals Court Pushes Granbury Toward an Actual Recall Vote

Granbury residents opposed to the roughly 2,000-acre "Project Patriot" data-center campus filed recall petitions July 13 against Mayor Jim Jarratt, Mayor Pro Tem Bruce Wadley, and council members Greg Corrigan, Skip Overdier and Zeb Ullom; the city initially rejected the petitions July 28 as not meeting legal requirements, according to Ballotpedia and the Fort Worth Report.
Residents took that rejection to the Second Court of Appeals in Fort Worth, and under that pressure the city agreed in late August to present the petitions to City Council within the charter's 15-day window, according to Hood County News and the Dallas Express.
The two sides still dispute when that 15-day clock started — organizers point to the original July 13 filing, the city to its own late-August agreement to move forward.
Newsweek reported this week that Granbury is now one of several communities nationwide where data-center opposition has turned into recall efforts against sitting officials.

Today's Signal: Whichever start date eventually controls, five sitting officials in a city of roughly 12,000 people are now facing a real recall vote over a single data-center project — a sign of how personal, and how local, these fights have become.

4. 💧 A State Senate Chairman Vows to Ban Evaporative Cooling Outright

The Texas Senate Committee on Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs held a hearing in early September dedicated to data-center water use, with lawmakers pressing officials on whether to require monthly rather than annual reporting of withdrawal volumes and water sources, according to Holland & Knight and The Texan.
Committee Chair Sen. Charles Perry told the panel no developer "has any business" using evaporative cooling in Texas and said he expects the technology to eventually be banned by law, per The Texan.
The hearing also surfaced a compliance gap independently confirmed by KVUE, the Austin American-Statesman and CBS News Texas: after refining an original list of 341 facilities down to 324 verified data centers, the Texas Water Development Board had received responses from only about 30% of them to a legally mandated 2025 water-use survey as of Aug. 26.
Industry witnesses pushed alternatives rather than disputing the numbers, pointing to closed-loop air cooling and produced water from oil-and-gas extraction as substitutes for fresh water, according to The Texan.

Today's Signal: A committee chairman publicly promising to ban a specific cooling technology — not just study it — is a sharper threat than the audits and moratoriums this briefing has tracked so far; an outright ban would force water-intensive projects already under construction to redesign their cooling systems, not just their paperwork.

5. 🦖 Hood County Commissioners Take Up a Data Center Near Dinosaur Valley State Park Today

Hood County Commissioners Court meets at 9 a.m. today to discuss proposed data-center projects near Dinosaur Valley State Park, WFAA reported this morning.
Community sources — Hood County Breaking News and the Sierra Club's Greater Fort Worth Group — independently identify the item as Commissioner Kevin Andrews placing the Ryan Hughes/Sailfish Investors project back on the agenda.
Hood County has fielded a string of competing data-center proposals this year — Comanche Circle, Sailfish, and Projects Panther and Lion among them — and commissioners conditionally approved an earlier, incomplete data-center plan only after roughly two hours of resident pushback, per Texas Scorecard.
No outcome yet to report — the meeting had not started as of this morning's research.

Today's Signal: This is the same commissioners court that already granted one conditional approval under resident pressure this year; today's vote — or non-vote — on Sailfish will show whether that pattern holds.

Quiet this morning on new TCEQ air-permit filings in the eight tracked counties and on new behind-the-meter generation deals beyond what's already on this briefing's radar.

📍 Today's Watch List

Actionable Signals for Tuesday, September 8

Prosper Town Council's vote tonight on the Project Tomahawk rezoning, following the Planning & Zoning Commission's 7-0 recommendation to deny it.
Whether Hood County Commissioners Court takes any action today on the Sailfish Investors/Ryan Hughes item, and what Commissioner Andrews's colleagues decide.
Whether the Westlake/Keller TRO hearing gets a new date, and what Judge Fitzpatrick ultimately rules once it happens.
Whether Granbury's City Council schedules an actual recall election for the five named officials, or fights the petitions again in court.
Whether the Senate Water, Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee turns Chairman Perry's evaporative-cooling comments into filed legislation ahead of the session convening January 12, 2027.
ERCOT's December 10 audit-completion deadline — no material movement expected before the December PUC meeting, so this item stays deprioritized on the watch list until that date approaches.