Texas grid operator ERCOT is overhauling the way it processes power connection requests, following unanimous board approval of a framework known as Batch Zero on June 1 and 2, 2026. A final vote by the Public Utility Commission of Texas, scheduled for June 17, would clear the last regulatory hurdle before the policy takes effect on July 10. The reform arrives as the state's interconnection queue has swelled to 438 gigawatts of pending large-load demand, roughly five times ERCOT's current peak capacity of about 85 GW. Data centers account for nearly 90 percent of that total, or approximately 394 GW. The pace of demand has been striking: the first quarter of 2026 alone saw 198 GW of new large-load applications filed.

The surge reflects a structural shift underway across the Texas power sector. Bitcoin miners, who built their business model around cheap electricity and the freedom to shut down during grid stress events, are converting their campuses into artificial intelligence and high-performance computing facilities. The April 2024 Bitcoin halving cut block rewards in half, compressing mining margins; in the years that followed, the global network hashrate declined from roughly 1,066 exahashes per second to about 1,004 EH/s by early 2026. The U.S. still accounts for an estimated 35 to 38 percent of global hashrate, with Texas as its center of gravity, but the economics of pure-play mining have pushed large operators toward higher-margin AI workloads.

Core Scientific is converting 300 megawatts of former mining capacity at its Texas campuses into a 1.5 GW AI data center campus. Riot Platforms filed a $400 million building permit for a new data center building at its Corsicana, Texas campus; in the first quarter of 2026, its data center segment generated $33.2 million in revenue, partially offsetting a dip in mining income within a total quarterly revenue figure of $167.2 million. IREN, formerly known as Iris Energy, secured a reported $9.7 billion agreement with Microsoft covering 76,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs across a 200 MW campus in Childress, Texas.

The old ERCOT interconnection process reviewed applications one at a time, meaning each new filing could trigger a full restudy of every project already in line. ERCOT VP of Interconnection and Grid Analysis Jeff Billo described the replacement approach plainly: "One study to rule them all." Under Batch Zero, ERCOT will run a single system-wide study every six months covering up to 100 GW of queued projects simultaneously. The framework also introduces two new registration categories. Controllable Load Resources, or CLRs, agree to accept curtailment orders from ERCOT during periods of grid stress in exchange for receiving their full requested capacity allocation in the batch study. This pathway matters because it formalizes curtailment as a defined grid service with regulatory standing, rather than treating it as a penalty or an informal arrangement. Withdrawal-Limited Private Use Networks, or WLPUNs, receive incremental annual capacity allocations beyond whatever generation they host on site. About 8.2 GW of projects already in the queue will face reassessment against both the new Batch Zero readiness criteria and Senate Bill 6 compliance requirements. ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas, speaking specifically in reference to the framework's capacity to study 100 GW of projects at once, has suggested the model "could serve as a template for other RTOs and ISOs" across the country.

The policy has direct relevance outside the United States, particularly in markets where compute infrastructure and energy surplus are intersecting without a formal regulatory structure to match them. Pakistan's government allocated 2,000 MW of surplus electricity to Bitcoin mining and AI data centers in May 2025, drawing on coal plants running at as little as 15 percent capacity. The allocation was overseen by the Pakistan Crypto Council, launched in March 2025 and chaired by Bilal Bin Saqib. Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb described the significance of the move in full: "This strategic allocation marked a pivotal moment in Pakistan's digital transformation journey, unlocking economic potential by turning excess energy into innovation, investment, and international revenue." The structural logic is similar to what Texas formalized with Batch Zero: redirecting stranded grid capacity toward compute workloads rather than letting it go to waste. Pakistan's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority launched a regulatory sandbox in February 2026, signaling progress toward the institutional-grade framework that large operators require before committing capital.

In Africa, Ethiopia has become the continent's most significant Bitcoin mining nation, drawing on hydroelectric power from the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and contributing a meaningful and growing share of global hashrate. Operators such as Gridless Compute and TerraHex Digital Assets Corp are deploying modular mining and AI compute containers alongside stranded or off-grid generation in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malawi. These projects already practice curtailment during grid stress as a matter of necessity. What ERCOT has now done is build a legal and commercial architecture around that same behavior, turning it into a formal grid service with defined queue priority and regulatory standing.

ERCOT's Billo said the agency assumes it "can get anything built by 2033," with grid reliability as the binding constraint on how quickly new load can be connected. He added: "We have to make sure we are reliably able to serve the loads we are saying we'll connect to the system." Stakeholders including Katie Bell of Meta have raised concerns that projects with 18-month build timelines may still miss Batch Zero eligibility windows, risking further delays. Whether the framework fully clears the backlog remains an open question, but regulators and infrastructure developers from Karachi to Addis Ababa now have a concrete policy blueprint to study as they design their own rules for the next wave of power-hungry digital infrastructure.