Ken King: The Chairman Who Rewrote the Load Law

Who is Ken King, and which King is he?

The House one. Ken King was born in Canadian in 1971 into a well-servicing family and runs the third generation of it – Black Gold Pump and Supply, King Well Service, a leasing company, a cattle operation – with the trade memberships to match: the American Petroleum Institute, the Independent Petroleum Association, the Panhandle Producers and Royalty Owners.^[3][5] He served on the Canadian school board and chaired the county appraisal district before beating an incumbent in the 2012 Republican runoff, 54–46, for a district that now covers nineteen counties from the Oklahoma line to the New Mexico line.^[1][4][5] His first decade in the House was Public Education and a series of chairs – Culture, Recreation and Tourism in 2021, Licensing in 2023, the investigation into the February 2024 Panhandle wildfires that burned a million acres, some of them his.^[2] “The Panhandle doesn't have a new wind problem; we have an 80-year-old infrastructure problem,” he said of what that investigation found.^[36] In January 2025 he was one of the Panhandle bloc behind Dustin Burrows for Speaker, and Burrows gave him State Affairs – the committee that hears the grid.^[6][1] The senator who wrote the bill he carried is on Phil King and Bitcoin; the two are not related, and this page is the other one.

What did he do to Senate Bill 6?

Rewrote its enforcement. The bill arrived from the Senate on April 22, 2025, thirty-one votes to none, and sat in his committee for a month.^[7] On May 23, at a formal meeting called to order at 3:45 p.m., he laid it out, offered a complete committee substitute, had it adopted without objection, and moved it favorably, 12–0 with three absent; the committee adjourned at 3:47.^[8] The House Research Organization's digest describes the substitute: the 75 megawatt threshold, the $100,000 study fee, site control and financial commitment, disclosure of on-site backup generation,ERCOT's authority to direct large loads to deploy backup or curtail once other services are exhausted, mandatory curtailment equipment for transmission-voltage loads interconnected after December 31, 2025, and a demand-reduction service ERCOT would procure.^[9] Then, on May 26, the floor amendment. Seventeen items: the emergency directive is narrowed to customers “with on-site backup generating facilities,” who “may be directed to either deploy” that backup or curtail; the Senate's expedited-interconnection program for flexible loads is struck in full; ERCOT's 180-day power to approve or deny co-location arrangements becomes an ERCOT study of 120 days and a Public Utility Commission decision within 60, with the decision moved from the grid operator to the commission; “dispatchable” is inserted before the capacity the arrangements must not impair; and generator liability language becomes a requirement that customers be held harmless.^[10] Anchía amended it 108–19, the House adopted it 136–3, Raymond added a provision letting excess power be sold to lower water bills, and the bill passed to third reading 117–24.^[11] What the finished statute does, clause by clause, is on the Texas Bitcoin law timeline; the loads it governs are on the mining map.

How did he explain it?

In gigawatts and in the journal. “We have single customers coming to Texas with an electric demand that surpasses the size of cities' needs,” he told the House; the whole Rio Grande Valley peaks at three gigawatts, and Stargate in Abilene was projected at twice that by 2030. “We certainly don't want large-load customers that sometimes are data centers for military operations to just be without power.”^[13] To the Tribune: “I think what this bill is seeking to do is set out clear rules where large load customers that want to come to Texas know what they're getting when they get here.”^[14] Then the part that lawyers will read for a decade. In a printed exchange with Representative Ashby on May 26, King affirmed for the record that the bill “is not to slow down large load projects that are currently in the works,” that a load co-locating with an existing generator under a contract signed before September 1 faces no new process, and that ERCOT and the commission may begin the review “immediately upon enactment.”^[11] The House passed the bill 103–25 on May 27, the Senate concurred May 29, and Abbott signed it June 20 – the same day as the reserve.^[12][23][7] The word bitcoin does not appear in any of it. The senator whose committee wrote the Senate's version is on Charles Schwertner and Bitcoin.

What is his record on the Bitcoin bills themselves?

Eight votes, eight yeas, nothing authored. He was not among the noes when Parker's HB 1576 and HB 4474 passed on Local and Consent in 2021, 126–20 and 126–17.^[17][18] He voted for Capriglione's commingling ban in April 2023, 148–0, and for Johnson's mining registry that May, 140–5.^[19][20] Kolkhorst's SB 1751, the brake on the miners, died unheard in House State Affairs that session – a committee he was not on; the chair who let it sit was someone else.^[21][2] In 2025 the gold-and- silver specie bill came through his own committee – referred March 7, heard March 26, reported April 23 – and he voted for it on the floor, 89–45; he voted for HJR 175, the right to a mutually agreed medium of exchange, 126–13; and he voted for SB 21 on May 21, 101–42, and for its conference report on May 29, 110–25.^{[24][25][22][23]} His own 2025 filings are the wildfire package the investigation produced – power lines at well sites, pole inspections, utility mitigation plans, battery-storage fire safety – and a committee on energy waste.^[15] The representative who carried the reserve through his chamber is on Giovanni Capriglione and Bitcoin; the reserve is on the Texas Strategic Bitcoin Reserve reference; the brake that died in his committee before he had it is on Lois Kolkhorst and Bitcoin.

What is he doing with the law now?

Holding the hearings. On March 26, 2026 the Speaker charged State Affairs to study data centers – their place in competitiveness and national security, the workforce, how to “streamline regulations while enabling communities to plan and manage growth responsibly” – and “the implementation of SB 6 and the Large Load Batch Study Process proposed by ERCOT.”^[26] On April 9 King chaired the first hearing, invited witnesses only: ERCOT's chief executive reported approximately 410 gigawatts of large loads seeking interconnection, about 87% of them data centers, to be studied in batches roughly every six months.^[27]“This hearing is only the beginning of a larger conversation as the Legislature prepares to develop a policy approach to incorporating the expanding data center industry into the state,” he said.^[28] On August 19 the committee took public testimony for a full day on data centers and the 765-kilovolt transmission lines being routed across the Panhandle and the Permian; King called it “really a routing issue” and said many of the proposals reaching him “kind of erode private property rights.”^[29][30] Five days later he wrote ERCOT and the commission that the transmission application process was flawed, that landowners were being noticed late, and that he wanted their help drafting “legislative guardrails” for data centers: “West Texas and the Permian Basin need power, but not built on the backs of thousands of farmers and ranchers.”^[31] The loads in that queue, and the miners turning into them, are on the Texas Bitcoin mining map.

The honest counterweight: the thin record, the business, and the primary

Three things. The thin record first: the only digital-asset statute with his name on it never mentions the asset, and the rest of his Bitcoin record is eight floor votes cast the way the House majority cast them.^[15][16] No statement of his on Bitcoin, mining, or the reserve has been located – no press release, no op-ed, no floor remark – and his words on the load law are about data centers and cities and gigawatts. That is the honest measure of a chairman whose subject is the grid, not the coin; the coin is on this page because the grid is where Texas decides what the coin may consume. Second, the business. He chairs the committee that oversees the grid and large loads while running oilfield-service companies and authoring well-site power-line law, and no reporter has framed that as a conflict; the record here is that no one has asked, not that anyone has answered.^[3][15] Third, the primary. The chairman who let more than a hundred bills die in State Affairs, by his critics' count, drew a Plainview rancher, two House colleagues filming ads against him, a seventh consecutive failing grade from Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, and a casino-funded PAC spending $246,000 to defend him, and won on March 3, 2026 with 53.9%.^{[32][34][33][4]}

The fair reading keeps the amendment in the middle of the page. The Senate wrote a bill that gave the grid operator a switch and a fast lane; the House, through him, kept the switch and aimed it at the customers who can answer it with their own generators, took the fast lane out, and moved the co-location decision to a commission that answers to the Legislature. Whether that made the law better or slower is a question the 410-gigawatt queue will answer before the 90th session does. What is not in question is whose hand shaped it.

Where does the Ken King record stand today?

As of September 2026: chair of State Affairs, on the November 3 ballot against Heather Wallace, with an interim report on data centers and SB 6 implementation due before the 90th Legislature convenes January 12, 2027.^[1][35][26] The transmission-cost review the law ordered is due from the commission by December 31, 2026.^[9] The senator who wrote the bill is on Phil King and Bitcoin; the reserve he voted for twice is in the hands of Comptroller Don Huffines; the statute-by-statute record they all sit inside is on the Texas Bitcoin law timeline. This page is the chairman who gave the load law its shape.