July 10, 2026 | Source: ERCOT Market Notice M-B062326-01 — Implementation of the Batch Zero Process (PGRR145/NPRR1325)
ERCOT's Old Large Load Study Process Dies Tonight. Batch Zero Goes Live Tomorrow.
As of end of day today, ERCOT's existing Large Load Interconnection Study process under Planning Guide Section 9 is done. Tomorrow, July 11, the Batch Zero Process takes effect.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas approved the two revision requests that make it happen — PGRR145 (Batch Zero Process for Large Load Interconnections) and NPRR1325. ERCOT gave formal notice to all market participants in Market Notice M-B062326-01, issued June 23, and held its final market readiness WebEx yesterday, July 9.
Batch Zero is a transitional study process. Instead of studying each large load request one at a time, ERCOT will evaluate reliability impacts on a system-wide basis for requests that meet defined study maturity and commitment criteria. Required forms and attestations for Interconnecting Large Load Entities, TSPs, and DSPs are posted on ERCOT's Large Load Integration page.
Why a batch study beats a one-at-a-time queue
If you've watched generation interconnection queues seize up over the past decade, you already understand the problem ERCOT is solving. Serial, first-come studies can't keep pace when gigawatts of data center load show up at once — each study invalidates the last, and nobody gets an answer they can build against.
Batch Zero flips that. By studying committed large loads together, ERCOT can allocate available transmission capacity across the batch and — to the extent feasible — produce an actionable transmission plan. For transmission planners, that means load interconnection starts looking like coordinated system planning instead of a stack of one-off impact studies.
For operators and planners outside Texas, watch this closely. FERC's June 18 show cause orders already have all six jurisdictional RTOs on the clock to justify or reform their own large load rules. ERCOT isn't FERC-jurisdictional — which means Texas just became the first live test of batch-based large load interconnection at scale. Expect the other regions to study the results.
EPG Solutions Can Help
Utilities and cooperatives making large load decisions right now need to know how their interconnection timelines, study assumptions, and transmission costs stack up against what peers and other regions are doing — and ERCOT just moved the benchmark. That's exactly the kind of question EPG Solutions' proprietary benchmark intelligence reports were built to answer. Visit EPG Solutions → epgsolutions.services