Texas ‘Batch Zero’ may ease grid hookups for miners

The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved ERCOT's “Batch Zero” process on Thursday to allocate transmission capacity to large electricity users in groups rather than evaluating requests one by one. ERCOT will analyze how multiple proposed projects interact with the existing transmission network and produce a coordinated view of needed upgrades and where capacity can be assigned.

The change responds to a backlog in ERCOT's interconnection queue, which contains more than 438,000 megawatts of proposed demand, about 90% of which are data‑center related. Regulators and grid planners noted that processing requests individually had become too slow to handle that volume.

The update may ease grid hookups for bitcoin mining companies that have been converting Texas campuses into AI and high‑performance computing data centers. Shares of several of those companies rose on Thursday: Cipher Digital reached a record $30 and was up more than 10%; Core Scientific rose about 3%; Riot Platforms climbed about 2.2%.

Cipher Digital has signed multiple hyperscaler agreements across its Texas properties, including a reported $5.5 billion lease with Amazon Web Services at its Black Pearl campus and a Barber Lake deal backed by a Google guarantee. Riot reported $33 million in data center revenue after beginning colocation services this year and expanded an AMD lease to 50 megawatts at its Corsicana campus, which is planned to support up to 1 gigawatt. Core Scientific recorded $78 million in colocation revenue in the first quarter, exceeding revenue from its bitcoin mining operations.

At the federal level, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission ordered six regional grid operators to demonstrate that rules for large electricity users do not shift costs to households and businesses and that they protect grid reliability. FERC Chair Laura Swett described the issue as “one of the country's top priorities.”

Batch Zero is intended to give a clearer picture of where transmission upgrades are required and may shorten timelines for some connections. Individual projects will still need permits and specific infrastructure work before they can be energized, and regulators will keep oversight as the interconnection process moves to batched evaluations.