Texas Writes the First Rulebook for Giant Loads: What SB 6 Asks of Data Centers

Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 6 on June 20, 2025, and it took effect immediately. A month on, the Public Utility Commission has opened its implementation project. It is the most detailed state law yet on how very large electricity customers, data centers above all, should connect to and behave on the grid. It arrives as ERCOT's queue of large loads seeking interconnection has grown to about 156,000 MW as of June 2, up from about 63,000 MW in December 2024, according to the grid operator's monthly operational overview.

That is a near-tripling in six months on a system whose all-time peak is about 85,500 MW. What it does is make large loads show more of their hand, pay something up front, and accept that in a grid emergency they will be expected to step back before households do. SB 6 directs the Public Utility Commission of Texas to adopt standards for customers requesting a new or expanded interconnection where the total load at a single site would exceed a demand threshold.

The commission must set that threshold at 75 MW unless it decides a lower one is needed. A large load customer must disclose to its interconnecting utility whether it is pursuing a substantially similar request for electric service elsewhere in Texas whose approval would lead it to materially change, delay or withdraw the request. The standards must set a flat study fee of at least $100,000 for initial transmission screening studies, paid to the interconnecting utility.

SB 6 directs ERCOT to develop a reliability service that competitively procures demand reductions from large loads of at least 75 MW, to be deployed when an emergency is anticipated. Texas has three features that make large loads a sharper problem than elsewhere. For data center developers, the message is that Texas still wants their business but now expects them to carry more of the risk they create.