Here’s a number that should make you uncomfortable: ERCOT’s interconnection queue, the line of projects waiting to plug into the Texas power grid, has ballooned to over 233 GW by early 2026. That’s a nearly 300% increase year-over-year.
The culprit is not mysterious. More than 70% of those ERCOT requests come from data centers, the sprawling server farms that power everything from ChatGPT to cloud computing.
Two grids, one massive problem
PJM Interconnection, which manages the grid across 13 states and serves roughly 65 million people from Virginia to Illinois, is staring down its own version of the same crisis. PJM forecasts peak load growth of 32 GW by 2030, with data centers as the primary driver.
It has already missed targets by several gigawatts, which is the kind of shortfall that threatens grid reliability and pushes electricity prices higher for everyone, not just the companies running AI workloads.
