⭐ Morning Briefing — September 14, 2026

(Covering Saturday, September 12 – Monday, September 14, 2026)

Top Story: Texas's grid operator spent the weekend demanding sworn proof that the data centers holding a place at the front of its connection line are real — miss the deadline and lose your spot — as it became clear over the weekend that Friday's PUC vote on three contested transmission lines split down the middle: one 370-mile line approved with conditions, two more sent back to the judges instead.

📰 Today's News

1. ⚡ ERCOT Tells Data Centers: Prove It Under Oath, or Lose Your Spot

ERCOT sent a market notice at 5:58 p.m. Sept. 9 announcing it had begun issuing "Batch Zero Verification Requests for Information" to the large power users it has tentatively placed at the front of its interconnection queue, warning that any company that fails to respond completely within 10 business days "will result in the Large Load being excluded from ERCOT's Batch Zero interconnection process," according to The Texas Dispatch, which published the story Sept. 13.
The document list ERCOT posted Sept. 9 asks each project's customer, utility, and local distribution company to prove — under a notarized attestation — that it owns the land it claims (an executed deed) and has actually posted the money it claims (proof of financial security, an ACH payment confirmation, a letter of credit).
The scale of the doubt is already on the record: ERCOT told the commission Aug. 20 that it had reviewed 290 dynamic models — the simulations showing how a project's equipment behaves when the grid wobbles — and found only about 18% acceptable on first review. Seventeen large customers representing 6,608 megawatts have cleared every step except final permission to switch on.
One thing ERCOT said it had done, it apparently hadn't: its Sept. 9 notice claimed it had posted the actual verification questions and a user guide, but as of the Dispatch's reporting, neither appeared on ERCOT's site — only an attestation form, with the user guide still described in future tense.
The verification push moved in parallel with more Batch Zero classifications going out: Sangha Renewables said Friday its planned 110.4-megawatt West Texas campus (Ector County) received conditional base-load status, one of several projects — alongside Core Scientific, Ionic, and IREN's Sweetwater hub — picking up similar ERCOT designations in the same window, per TheEnergyMag.

Today's Signal: ERCOT has already admitted barely one in five of the models it's reviewed passed on the first try — this sworn, notarized verification requirement is the audit's first mechanism with actual teeth, not just another form to file.

2. ⚖️ Friday's PUC Vote, Decoded: One 765kV Line Wins, Two Get Sent Back

The Public Utility Commission's Friday, Sept. 11 meeting — previewed in Friday's briefing — approved the 370-mile Howard Solstice transmission line across 14 counties including Uvalde, Kerr, Bexar, and Medina, conditioned on the two transmission companies working further with landowners on the route, The Texas Tribune reported.
The same meeting sent the two Import Path 2 lines — Bell County East-to-Big Hill (roughly 214-244 miles, $1.6-1.9 billion) and Big Hill-to-Sand Lake ($1.6-1.9 billion combined with station work) — back to the State Office of Administrative Hearings, following a Sept. 9 memo from PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson. Gleeson argued the administrative law judges' recommendation to reject both lines had left two required questions unanswered: whether the lines are actually necessary to meet reliability standards, and how much they'd save consumers. 6 News KCEN and Rep. Brad Buckley confirmed the remand over the weekend.
The judges had also found in August that the companies "deprived approximately 1,400 landowners" of legally required notice on the Bell County line — a finding Gleeson's memo didn't dispute, even as he chose not to let commissioners act on it yet.
Notably, Gleeson took the opposite approach two weeks earlier: rather than remand a similar North Texas line with its own landowner-notice problems, the commission simply deleted the judges' unfavorable notice findings and approved it outright.
What the same Friday meeting decided on the $50,000-per-megawatt interconnection fee rule and its "phantom demand" disclosure provision remains unreported as of this writing — no outlet has yet confirmed whether commissioners kept the fee at full strength or the halved rate they adopted in March.

Today's Signal: Landowners across parts of 15 counties are now waiting on a second round at SOAH with no new deadline set, while Gleeson's willingness to remand one set of notice problems but paper over another raises the question of what actually decides which projects get the benefit of the doubt.

3. 🏗️ Hood and Bell Counties: A TCEQ Fight and a $4.2 Billion Campus, Both Still Moving

In Hood County, Bilateral Energy LLC's Knox Ranch data center and gas power plant near Granbury is seeking a revision to its TCEQ air permit (Permit Revision #180579), and the agency opened a public opposition-comment period this weekend. Local groups — Texans United Against Data Centers, Texas Coalition Against Datacenters, and Granbury- and Hood County-focused community pages — began circulating instructions Saturday for submitting comments and requesting a public hearing.
In Temple (Bell County, just south of the DFW counties this briefing tracks), Rowan Digital Infrastructure confirmed its six-building campus represents a total minimum investment of $4.2 billion and said it has no additional Temple sites planned beyond those six, the Killeen Daily Herald reported Sept. 13. Rowan is also funding roughly $32 million — about 45% — of Temple's $71.1 million South Temple Water Infrastructure Capital Program, and says each building's closed-loop cooling system will draw about 32,000 gallons a day once initial fill water finishes recirculating.
Temple's city council is scheduled to take a second and final reading Sept. 17 on new zoning rules that would replace the city's "small"/"large" data-center categories with "principal" and "accessory" ones, require a conditional-use permit for principal data centers, and set a 200-foot minimum buffer from single-family homes — rules first advanced Sept. 3, ahead of the Rowan campus's continued build-out.

Today's Signal: Two different counties are reaching for two different tools on the same underlying question — Hood County residents are working the TCEQ's public-comment process on a single power-plant permit, while Temple is rewriting its zoning code before the next data center even applies — and both processes are still open, not resolved.

Quiet this weekend on data-center-specific developments in Collin, Ellis, Johnson, Denton, Wise, Tarrant, and Parker counties beyond what's already on the record.

📍 Today's Watch List

Actionable Signals for Monday, September 14

Whether ERCOT's Batch Zero verification demands — due back in late September — actually knock any of the 6,608 MW of nearly-finished projects out of line, or whether the paperwork simply gets fixed in time.
Whether Friday's PUC meeting adopted the $50,000-per-megawatt interconnection fee at full strength, at the halved rate commissioners set in March, or somewhere in between — still unconfirmed.
Whether Temple's Sept. 17 council meeting finalizes the "principal"/"accessory" data-center zoning rewrite, and whether the 200-foot home buffer survives to final passage.
Whether TCEQ schedules a public hearing on the Knox Ranch/Bilateral Energy permit revision now that opposition groups are pushing for one.
Whether the Bell County-to-Big Hill and Big Hill-to-Sand Lake lines get a new SOAH timeline, given the Bell County decision was previously due by Sept. 22 before Friday's remand.
ERCOT's December 10 audit-completion deadline and the roughly 250-300 projects (~200 GW) in the first review batch — no material movement expected before the December PUC meeting, so this stays at the bottom of the list until that date approaches.