ERCOT's 427 GW interconnection queue now holds 39% of all US requested load — time-to-power extends into the multi-year range

CORRECTION (2026-10-02): This release said ERCOT's interconnection queue held 427 GW, "39% of all US queued load". The 39% was a ratio of ERCOT's large-load queue to a generation-queue total, not a share of US queued load, and is withdrawn. DC Hub's canonical ERCOT figures: large-load queue 474.0 GW (as of 2026-06, ERCOT-published); data-center portion 426.6 GW (derived: ~90% of the large-load total); generation interconnection queue 453.8 GW (as of 2026-09-30), a separate queue. A load queue and a generation queue must not be divided or added. Current figures: https://dchub.cloud/api/v1/interconnection-queue/snapshot

## Highlights

ERCOT's interconnection queue now stands at **427 GW of requested load**, accounting for **39% of all queued capacity across US ISOs** as of June 30, 2026. That concentration—nearly two-fifths of the nation's pipeline in a single grid—means time-to-power for new large loads in Texas has stretched well beyond 24 months for most substations, and in many cases into the three- to four-year range.

## What it means for site selection

If you are evaluating a greenfield or expansion site in ERCOT territory, the queue depth is now a **first-order input to your go/no-go model**. A substation with 2+ GW already in the study process will not energize a new 100 MW load in 2027—or even 2028—without either a grid upgrade funded by the developer or a willingness to accept curtailment risk during peak intervals. Capex models that assume 18-month commissioning timelines in Texas are obsolete; add 12–24 months of interconnection lag, or look to markets with sub-100 GW queues (SPP, MISO non-metro zones) where study cycles remain under two years.

## The second-order risk

The 427 GW figure also implies that **generator interconnection and load interconnection are now competing for the same substation capacity** in ERCOT's most attractive zones (West Texas wind corridors, metro-adjacent industrial parks). A hyperscaler signing a lease in 2026 may find that the utility's five-year capital plan already allocated the next tranche of transformer capacity to a solar-plus-storage project filed six months earlier. In practice, this means **land control and utility pre-coordination must happen in parallel**, not sequentially, and that time-to-power is now as much a function of queue position as it is of on-site construction speed.

Source: DC Hub Data Center Power Index (https://dchub.cloud/dcpi). Updated daily. ERCOT interconnection queue data: https://www.ercot.com/misdownload/servlets/mirDownload?doclookupId=1233678977

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