ERCOT's Texas Transmission Buildout: Who Pays — Data Centers or Your Bill?

What ERCOT Just Approved

ERCOT, the grid operator for about 90% of Texas, is in the middle of the largest transmission expansion in its history — a response to surging electricity demand from data centers, crypto-mining, electrification and population growth. According to reporting on the May 2026 stakeholder process, ERCOT's Technical Advisory Committee endorsed approximately $6.5 billion in transmission projects on May 19, 2026, the same day it approved the planning-guide revision (PGRR145) that sets up "batch zero," a new framework for studying and connecting very large new loads. Those projects and the batch-zero rules were teed up for ERCOT's board meeting on June 1–2, 2026.

That $6.5 billion is itself a slice of a much bigger plan. In December 2025, ERCOT's board approved a roughly $9.4 billion, ~1,109-mile 765-kV "Eastern Backbone" line — described as the single most expensive project in the grid operator's history — as the first major piece of its Strategic Transmission Expansion Plan (STEP). Trade and transmission press have pegged the full STEP package at around $33 billion and roughly 2,468 miles of new 765-kV line, plus upgrades to existing circuits, built out over several years (the exact scope and pace depend on permitting and supply chains).

High-voltage 765-kV lines can move large amounts of power across long distances with fewer losses, which is why planners favor them for connecting West Texas wind and solar to fast-growing demand centers in the Dallas–Fort Worth area and beyond. The build itself is widely seen as necessary for reliability. The fight is over the bill.

The Buildout at a Glance

Sources: ERCOT stakeholder/board reporting (Texas Energy & Power, RTO Insider) and trade coverage of the 765-kV plan. Dollar and mileage figures are as reported by ERCOT and trade press and remain subject to final approvals, permitting and revision.

Who Pays — and How It Reaches Your Bill

Here's the part that matters for your wallet. Transmission lines are paid for by the regulated transmission and distribution utilities (TDUs) — Oncor in Dallas–Fort Worth and much of North/West Texas, CenterPoint in Houston, AEP Texas in South/West Texas, and TNMP in scattered areas — and recovered from customers through the delivery charge on your bill, often via a "transmission cost recovery factor." As more transmission gets built and placed into service, that delivery component tends to drift upward over time for everyone in a territory. That is the same regulated delivery charge behind Oncor's modest June 2026 increase.

The big open question — which ERCOT's own stakeholders raised at the May meeting — is who should shoulder the cost of growth driven largely by enormous new users. Texas Senate Bill 6 (2025) and the PUCT's new large-load interconnection rules push some of that cost onto the loads themselves: under the proposed standards, new loads of 75 MW or more would owe six-figure interconnection study fees and a non-refundable fee of about $50,000 per MW of contracted demand, and would pay directly for dedicated interconnection facilities. But how much of the shared transmission backbone ultimately lands on data centers versus ordinary households is a cost-allocation decision the PUCT has not finalized. As one industry account put it, the central question is whether new loads will cover enough of these costs to protect existing customers from rising prices.

What This Means for Texas Shoppers

Because transmission costs reach you through the delivery charge — which is the same for every retail electricity provider in your TDU territory — this buildout raises everyone's baseline bill equally and does not change which energy plan is cheapest for you. The plan that's cheapest at your usage today is still the cheapest after delivery rates tick up; every plan's total just moves by the same delivery amount.

What does change which plan wins is your own usage — and that's where most shoppers get tripped up by the "1,000 kWh illusion." Providers tune their advertised rate to look cheapest at exactly 1,000 kWh, but the plan that's actually cheapest for a small apartment at 600 kWh is often a different plan than the one that wins for a large home running the AC at 2,000 kWh. The only way to know is to compare plans at your real usage.

Use our bill estimator to project your summer usage, then compare plans at that level to see your true effective rate. To understand the delivery side of the bill, see our guides on how TDU delivery charges work and how to read your Texas electricity bill.

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