The Public Utility Commission and Bitcoin: The List It Keeps

What is the commission, and what is ERCOT?

Two bodies the press calls one. The Public Utility Commission of Texas is the regulator: created by the Public Utility Regulatory Act in 1975, three members until the Legislature made it five in SB 2154 after Winter Storm Uri, each appointed by the governor, required since 2021 to live in Texas and to stay out of lobbying for a year after leaving.^[1] It writes rules in the Texas Administrative Code, approves or rejects the grid operator's protocol changes, decides contested cases, and answers to the Legislature and the Governor. Peter Lake chaired it from April 2021 until July 2023; Thomas Gleeson, its executive director since December 2020 and fifteen years at the agency, has chaired it since January 23, 2024.^[2][3] ERCOT is the grid operator the commission oversees: the nonprofit that runs the market, the interconnection queue, the ancillary services, and the curtailment programs, under a board the same 2021 session rebuilt. When a Bitcoin mine sells its load back to the grid, it sells to ERCOT under ERCOT's rules; when the state decides what a large load must do to connect, the commission writes the rule and ERCOT applies it. This page keeps them apart, because on the mines the operator moved first and the commission followed. The senator who wrote the commission's large-load statute is on Phil King and Bitcoin; the sites the rules govern are on the Texas Bitcoin mining map.

How did the grid meet the mines?

Through ERCOT, in 2022, with instruments the operator called temporary. On March 25, 2022 ERCOT issued an interim interconnection process for standalone loads of 75 megawatts or more and co-located loads of 20, effective immediately – a market notice that never says the word crypto and was written for nothing else.^[4] A Large Flexible Load Task Force met from April 14, was chartered in May, and is now inactive, succeeded by a working group.^[5] On December 6, 2022 ERCOT opened a voluntary curtailment program for “large flexible customers, such as bitcoin mining facilities,” to run “until ERCOT establishes a long-term set of rules.”^[6] Two weeks later Winter Storm Elliott arrived, and ERCOT's report recorded the mines doing what the industry says they do: the large flexible loads “curtailed their consumption from 1,530 MW to 130 MW (a 91.5% reduction) during the peak,” all twenty known sites, most of them once prices passed $70 to $110 a megawatt-hour.^[7] In August 2023 Riot Platforms reported $31.7 million for standing down at Rockdale – $7.4 million of it ERCOT's ancillary-service payments, $24.2 million power credits under its contract with TXU – and the number became the industry's argument and its critics' in the same week.^[8] The commission's role in all of it was oversight: no rule of its own, no statement on the mines in Elliott or in the August heat that has been located, and when the Legislature took up the question in March 2023, its executive director registered “on” – a resource for the committee, not a witness for either side – while Riot and US Bitcoin testified against Kolkhorst's brake and the Sierra Club for it.^[10] The brake is on Lois Kolkhorst and Bitcoin; the Rockdale site is on Rockdale, Texas and Bitcoin.

What is the registry, and why did it take seventeen months?

The one rule the commission wrote for the mines alone. SB 1929, Nathan Johnson's 2023 statute, requires any virtual-currency mining facility in ERCOT expecting more than 75 megawatts to register with the commission within one business day of its power agreement, with a five-year demand forecast, and lets the commission share the data with ERCOT.^[9] It took effect September 1, 2023. The commission opened Project 56962, published a proposed rule in September 2024, and adopted 16 TAC § 25.114 on November 21, 2024 – fourteen months after the statute, seventeen after it was signed – and made it heavier than the bill: location, owners, business form, electricity demand, a five-year peak forecast, prior-year consumption, annual renewal, existing facilities registered by February 1, 2025, and a Class A violation of up to $25,000 per day for failing to, all collected through an internal tool the public cannot see.^[11][12] Gleeson: “To ensure the ERCOT grid is reliable and meets the electricity needs of all Texans, the PUCT and ERCOT need to know the location and power needs of virtual currency miners.” Lee Bratcher, for the Blockchain Council: “The information that the PUC is requesting is appropriate and far less invasive than what the Federal Government attempted under the Biden Administration earlier this year.”^[13] About 2,600 megawatts of mining was on the grid at adoption, with as much again approved; by 2025 the mines drew some 54 billion kilowatt-hours, roughly a tenth of ERCOT's consumption.^[12][14] The commission has never said how many facilities registered. The senator who wrote the statute, and waited for the rule, is on Nathan Johnson and Bitcoin.

Why did it sue the Attorney General?

To keep the list. Reporters for Straight Arrow News and the Texas Tribune requested the registrations – names, locations, owners, megawatts, demand-response enrollment. The commission refused, citing the Public Information Act's exception for critical infrastructure, and asked the Attorney General to agree. On May 15, 2025 an assistant attorney general ruled the commission “failed to demonstrate the information at issue identifies the technical details of particular vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure to an act of terrorism” and ordered release.^[15] On June 27, 2025 the commission sued the Attorney General: “In the wrong hands, this information could be used by terrorists to plan attacks on Texas's energy grid and critical infrastructure” through “manipulation of the volume of available reliable electricity.” Its press officer declined to comment on pending litigation; Riot and Marathon declined to comment at all.^[16] By November it had spent about $13,000 of the $56,000 in outside counsel it paid that year fighting three records rulings, and the case was still pending; no ruling has been reported since.^[17] Two things sit beside the suit. In July 2026 the same commission asked the Legislature for mandatory registration of every data center and large load – more of the data it is litigating to keep – and in August its audit swept in every crypto facility of 25 megawatts or more, a third of the registry's threshold.^[31][32]The office it sued, and the ruling it is fighting, are on the Texas Attorney General and Bitcoin.

What has it written under SB 6?

Two rules, two proposals, and a replacement for the charge the mines learned to dodge. The large-load law of June 20, 2025 set a 75-megawatt threshold the commission may lower, a $100,000 minimum study fee, site control, disclosure of backup generation, mandatory curtailment for loads interconnecting after December 31, 2025, ERCOT's emergency authority, and a deadline of December 31, 2026 for the commission to re-examine how transmission costs are allocated.^[18] Staff mapped it into five projects that October, with the queue at 189 gigawatts and a line that would matter: “Diverse types of large loads may warrant different treatment.”^[19]The forecasting rule, § 25.370, took effect March 1, 2026: after this year only loads with a compliant interconnection agreement count in ERCOT's forecast.^[20] The co-location rule, § 25.205, was adopted March 26: no net-metering arrangement behind an existing generator without the commission's approval after ERCOT's 120-day study and a 60-day decision, and the first case – Crusoe's 260-megawatt AI data center at a wind farm in Hutto – was approved July 23 on condition of full curtailment within thirty minutes of ERCOT's direction, breaker disconnection authorized, no compensation.^[22][23] The interconnection standards, § 25.194, were proposed March 12 – $50,000 per megawatt in security, study fees of $100,000 to $300,000, an 80% forfeiture on withdrawal – and had not been adopted in September; the demand-management service, which by its terms excludes loads already selling flexibility, is pending too.^[21][22] The 4CP review became something larger. Staff's March draft named “crypto mines and certain types of data centers” as flexible loads that cut consumption at the four summer peaks “without commensurate system cost reductions”; on July 9 the commission published staff's replacement – twelve coincident peaks on thirty-minute intervals, a minimum billing demand, ERCOT access to large-load meters – modeled to move three points of transmission cost off residential customers, with a decision targeted for December.^[24][25] The chairman's formulation, in June: “A Bitcoin miner is different from a hyperscaler, is different from a steel mill or a chemical plant.” “The megawatt we don't use is just as important as the megawatt that we generate.”^[26] The House chairman who reshaped the law the rules implement is on Ken King and Bitcoin.

What happened to the queue?

It outran the rules. Large loads seeking interconnection stood at 63 gigawatts at the end of 2024; 189 in the commission's October 2025 deck; 233 at the end of 2025 – “We have outgrown the process,” ERCOT's Kristi Hobbs said in January – 410 when ERCOT briefed the House on April 9, 2026, 87% of it data centers; 438 when the commission approved ERCOT's Batch Zero process on June 18, under which every request is studied with every other every six months.^{[35][19][20][28]} On June 10 the Governor had written Gleeson and ERCOT's Pablo Vegas to make data centers pay “all of their electric infrastructure costs” and to see that their interconnections “result in reduced residential electrical bills”; on July 17 the commission and ERCOT answered with a joint memo asking the Legislature for direct emergency communication with data centers and mandatory registration of all of them – “Texas should welcome responsible economic development,” Gleeson said, “but it must do so in a manner that prioritizes affordability, reliability, and the interests of the residents who depend on the grid.”^[29][31] On August 3 the Governor cited “approximately 474 gigawatts … more than five times Texas' record peak” and ordered a “comprehensive verification and audit of all data centers advancing through ERCOT's interconnection process before any additional data centers are approved.”^[30] On August 20 the commission granted ERCOT's request to pause Batch Zero's classification; the audit covers 250 to 300 projects and, by ERCOT's notice, every crypto facility of 25 megawatts or more, with a filing targeted for December 10.^[32] In between, the commission adopted unanimously a ride-through rule requiring large computational loads to stay connected through voltage and frequency disturbances – 28 trips of 100 megawatts or more since 2023 – over the Blockchain Council's objection that battery mitigation would cost “more than $1.6 million per MW,” and on August 28 approved the first 765-kilovolt lines of the Permian Basin plan over the objection of 43 legislators and Ken King's letter, Commissioner Hjaltman telling the landowners, “I understand the proceedings are not just about infrastructure to you. They're about your land.”^[33][34] The governor who wrote both letters is on Greg Abbott and Bitcoin.

The honest counterweight: the slowness, the loophole, and the secrecy

Three things, and the commission's own documents supply two of them. First, slowness. ERCOT's 2022 process was interim and its program “temporary”; the task force went inactive without a permanent large-flexible-load rule; the durable framework arrived only with a statute in 2025 and a batching process in 2026, by which time the operator's own vice president said it had outgrown the process.^[6][5][35] The registry took seventeen months; the interconnection standards, proposed in March, are the rule the industry files under and the one still open.^[12][21] Second, the loophole, in staff's words: the four-coincident-peak charge let “crypto mines and certain types of data centers” shed load at the peaks and avoid transmission costs “without commensurate system cost reductions,” and the commission is only now, under statutory deadline and gubernatorial letter, replacing it – a decade after the mines arrived and a year and a half after Commissioner Glotfelty likened their grid-hero reputation to teenagers praised for putting out a grass fire their fireworks had started.^[24][36] Third, secrecy. An agency that wants the Legislature to make every data center register, and that is auditing every mine over 25 megawatts, is in court to keep the public from seeing which mines over 75 registered, on a terrorism theory the Attorney General found unproven; the two positions can be reconciled – the agency wants the data, not the public to have it – but the reconciliation is the point.^[16][31] What cuts the other way is real. The mines did cut 91.5% at Elliott's peak; the ride-through rule and the co-location conditions put the reliability risk on the load, as the chairman says, “on the private company, not on the citizens”; and the industry itself has called the registry “appropriate” and the large-load law a fix for the “phantom load.”^{[7][26][13][18]}

The fair reading is that the commission has treated Bitcoin mining as a load problem and not a policy one – it has never said the mines should or should not be in Texas, only that it needs to know where they are and that they should pay their share of the wires – and that both of those positions were reached late and are still being written into rule. The question the commission has not answered, and the one its audit will force, is whether a miner that sells its flexibility is a benefit the grid should pay for or a cost it should recover, and its staff and its chairman have now said both.

Where does the commission stand today?

As of September 2026: two SB 6 rules adopted and two pending, a 12CP decision due in December, Batch Zero paused for an audit due December 10, a records suit against the Attorney General with no ruling, a registry whose count it has not disclosed, and a chairman with a term to 2029.^{[21][25][32][17][3]} The 90th Legislature convenes January 12, 2027 with the commission's own request for data-center registration on its desk and the House chairman who will hear it on Ken King and Bitcoin. The regulator next door, which has never taken a position on the asset, is on the Texas Attorney General and Bitcoin; the statute-by-statute record the commission implements is on the Texas Bitcoin law timeline. This page is the list the commission keeps, and will not show.