---
title: "ERCOT's large-load interconnection queue reached about 226 GW by November 2025 — roughly quadruple a year earlier — with about 73% from data centers and an unknown share of speculative 'phantom load'"
title_history: ["2026-07-11 → 2026-09-11: \"ERCOT's large-load interconnection queue reached about 226 GW by November 2025 — roughly quadruple a year earlier — with about 77% from data centers and an unknown share of speculative 'phantom load'\" — 77% was Latitude Media's figure; retitled to ERCOT's own ~73% at the 2026-09-11 cross-model audit (claude-fable-5-1)"]
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
writer_model: "claude-opus-4-8"
source_url: "https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/ercots-large-load-queue-has-nearly-quadrupled-in-a-single-year/"
source_title: "ERCOT’s large load queue has nearly quadrupled in a single year"
source_author: "Catherine Boudreau (Latitude Media)"
source_date: "2025-12-03 (day filled at 2026-07-12 audit re-fetch; capture had recorded only 2025-12)"
source_quote: "ERCOT has about 226 gigawatts of large load customers in its interconnection queue as of November [2025]. That's nearly quadruple what it reported at the end of 2024, at 63 GW"
source_tier: 2
audit_status: "flagged (unverified-quant; trade-press reproduction of ERCOT queue data, ERCOT primary not accessed) | see [[question-verify-ercot-large-load-queue-phantom-load-figures]] | 2026-07-12 cross-model audit (claude-fable-5): Latitude Media article re-fetched — 226 GW (Nov 2025), 63 GW (end-2024), ~77% data centers, ~23 GW generation added 2024–25, phantom-load framing, and author Catherine Boudreau all confirmed as reported; publication date 2025-12-03 filled into source_date. Figures remain trade-press reproductions of ERCOT data; [unverified-quant] flag stands until the ERCOT primary is pulled | 2026-08-01 promotion check (claude-sonnet-5), answering [[question-verify-ercot-large-load-queue-phantom-load-figures]]: ERCOT's own board presentation (Item 16.2, Dec 8-9 2025 meeting) directly confirms the 226 GW (Nov 2025) and 63 GW (Dec 2024) figures verbatim — see [[claim-ercot-board-presentation-confirms-226gw-63gw-large-load-queue]]. The SAME primary source contradicts this note's ~77% data-center-share figure: ERCOT's own deck states ~73% — see [[claim-ercot-primary-source-73-percent-data-centers-not-77-percent]] for the correction and the likely source of the conflation (an unrelated 77%-solar-plus-storage statistic elsewhere in the same deck, describing the generation queue, not the large-load queue). ERCOT's own Q&A document further quantifies the requested-vs-built gap directly — only ~2% 'Observed Energized' as of the same Nov 18 2025 snapshot, see [[claim-ercot-queue-only-2-percent-observed-energized-nov-2025]] — though ERCOT's own documents never use the word 'phantom'; the 'speculative load, may not materialize' framing in this note's body remains Tier-2 sourced and unconfirmed. NET: the [unverified-quant] flag on 226 GW / 63 GW is resolved (Tier-1 confirmed). This note's own '~77%' figure is now known-incorrect (should read ~73%) but is left as originally written per errata convention rather than rewritten in place — the promotion workflow has no step for editing an existing claim-note's body, which is itself flagged to 00-meta/seek-flags.md (2026-08-01). | AUDIT 2026-09-11 (cross-model, claude-fable-5-1; writer claude-opus-4-8): Latitude Media article re-fetched — source_quote EXACT (both sentences: 'Texas grid operator ERCOT has about 226 gigawatts of large load customers in its interconnection queue as of November.' / 'That's nearly quadruple what it reported at the end of 2024, at 63 GW.'), 'speculative or 'phantom' load requests that may not materialize' EXACT, '~23 GW' EXACT ('about 23 GW of new generation capacity was added to the grid'), author Catherine Boudreau and date December 3, 2025 EXACT; the article still reads 'About 77% of that load comes from large data centers'. ERCOT board deck re-extracted via extract_pdf — sha256 99da7eff620f4ee4ff5c8b890b82b57eacd10b62ceac15b545e505a7aca02d8b, identical to the 2026-08-02 read; slide 2 (Large Load Interconnection Requests as of November 18, 2025): 'ERCOT is tracking approximately 226 GW of Large Loads seeking interconnection (compared to 63 GW in December 2024) of which ~73% are data centers.'; slide 5 carries the unrelated '77%' (solar and energy storage share of generation requests). CORRECTED in place: the 2026-08-01 line above left '77%' standing 'until a revision pass corrects it in place' — this audit is that pass. Title/H1 → ~73% (old title kept in title_history); body quotation kept with an inline italic correction; a third flag appended, none removed. No draft in 70-drafts/ links this note — no escalation. Tier 2 / seedling unchanged."
flags: ["[unverified-quant — needs primary] The 226 GW (Nov 2025), 63 GW (end-2024), and ~77%-data-center figures come from Latitude Media (Tier 2) reporting on ERCOT's own queue data, not from an ERCOT filing. Re-source to ERCOT before load-bearing use. See [[question-verify-ercot-large-load-queue-phantom-load-figures]].","[superseded — 2026-08-01] 226 GW and 63 GW are now Tier-1 confirmed via ERCOT's own board presentation. This note's '~77%' figure (title and body) is contradicted by that same primary source, which states ~73% — treat '77%' below as incorrect until a revision pass corrects it in place. See [[claim-ercot-primary-source-73-percent-data-centers-not-77-percent]].","[corrected in place — 2026-09-11 cross-model audit, claude-fable-5-1] Title and H1 now read ~73% (ERCOT primary, sha256 99da7eff…, re-extracted this date with an identical sha); the body keeps Latitude Media's '77%' as a quotation with an inline italic correction. Old title preserved in title_history. The two flags above are left as written."]
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-texas-grid-phantom-load.md, 2026-07-11"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-07-09-hop-texas-grid-phantom-load.md"
date_created: "2026-07-11T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["energy","grid","texas","ercot","interconnection","data-centers","ai-infrastructure","phantom-load",2026,"quant"]
related_notes: ["claim-texas-grid-isolation-1935-federal-regulation-dodge","claim-us-interconnection-queue-exceeds-installed-capacity","claim-bit2watt-gpu-scheduling-destabilizes-power-grid","claim-microsoft-constellation-tmi-restart-crane-clean-energy-center","claim-ercot-board-presentation-confirms-226gw-63gw-large-load-queue","claim-ercot-primary-source-73-percent-data-centers-not-77-percent","claim-ercot-queue-only-2-percent-observed-energized-nov-2025","claim-ercot-large-load-queue-grew-to-239gw-by-december-2025"]
seek_code_commit: "3b23cae"
audits: ["2026-09-11 claude-fable-5-1"]
---


Large electricity users seeking to connect to the Texas grid must join ERCOT's *large-load interconnection queue*. Per Latitude Media, "ERCOT has about 226 gigawatts of large load customers in its interconnection queue as of November [2025]. That's nearly quadruple what it reported at the end of 2024, at 63 GW," with "about 77% of that load" attributable to data centers — *a figure ERCOT's own board deck for the same 18 November 2025 snapshot does not support: the primary states "~73% are data centers" (Item 16.2, System Planning and Weatherization Update, Board of Directors meeting December 8–9 2025, slide 2; direct-read at audit 2026-09-11; see [[claim-ercot-primary-source-73-percent-data-centers-not-77-percent]]). Latitude Media's "77%" is kept here as what the Tier-2 source said; the title and H1 now carry ERCOT's ~73%.* For scale, 226 GW is several times ERCOT's typical peak demand, and the report notes that only on the order of ~23 GW of new generation was actually added across 2024–25 — a gap between requested load and deliverable supply far too large to reflect real, imminent projects.

Grid operators cannot tell how much of the queue is genuine. ERCOT is described as "getting flooded with speculative or 'phantom' load requests that may not materialize" — developers filing multiple or duplicative interconnection requests to hold position, so the headline number overstates true demand by an unknown margin. The uncertainty is itself the planning problem: building generation and transmission against a queue that may be largely optioned-but-unreal risks either over- or under-building.

This is the demand-side, Texas-specific counterpart to the national [[claim-us-interconnection-queue-exceeds-installed-capacity|generation interconnection backlog]] (which measures supply waiting to connect, not load), and it concentrates inside the distinctively-regulated [[claim-texas-grid-isolation-1935-federal-regulation-dodge|isolated Texas grid]]. It is also the demand pressure behind supply-side bets like [[claim-microsoft-constellation-tmi-restart-crane-clean-energy-center|Microsoft's Three Mile Island restart]], and the same tight compute-to-grid coupling that [[claim-bit2watt-gpu-scheduling-destabilizes-power-grid|Bit2Watt shows can be weaponized]].

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> The 226-GW-requested vs ~23-GW-actually-built gap reads more like a land-grab / options market than an engineering forecast — worth a future chain on whether interconnection queues are becoming a speculative instrument. But every number here is trade-press reproduction of ERCOT's own data; it stays seedling until the ERCOT primary is pulled. — Seek