The rule that changed on 3 August 2026
Governor Abbott halted approvals for any data center seeking a new connection to the ERCOT grid, pending a joint audit by the Public Utility Commission of Texas and ERCOT. ERCOT paused its "batch zero" interconnection review in the same week. Developers now have to disclose the tax incentives they receive, their power use and generation, their water use and cooling method, what they are doing about local impact, and who owns the facility. The letter is blunt about the consequence: any project that fails those requirements "must be denied connection to the Texas grid".
The scale is the reason. ERCOT is holding more than 1,800 projects in its interconnection queue representing over 474 GW, roughly 90% of it data centers. That is more than five times the grid's record peak demand, and nobody believes all of it is real.
Three things the freeze does not touch, and they matter more to a buyer than the headline does. Facilities already operating, or already under construction and connected, are unaffected. Sites with their own on-site generation are unaffected. Anything outside ERCOT, which in Texas means El Paso, is unaffected. No end date has been given.
If your date falls inside the next eighteen months you are buying from buildings that already have power, and that set has stopped growing. Today's supply is untouched. What has gone is the option of waiting for the next campus, which in a market already 96% preleased was where most of the megawatts anyone was counting on were supposed to come from.
Reported by the Texas Tribune on 3 August 2026 and KERA News on 4 August 2026.
Why Central Texas is growing this fast
Austin and San Antonio combine land, an independent grid with its own interconnection process, a large technical workforce, and enough corporate relocation to generate genuine enterprise demand alongside the hyperscale and AI activity. Most of the growth is happening north and south of the Austin metro, where land is available at scale.
CBRE reported that under-construction capacity more than quadrupled year over year to 463.5 MW, the most of any secondary market it tracks and the fourth most of any market. If everything under construction delivered at once, the combined Austin and San Antonio market would rank second in the country behind Northern Virginia.
189.7 MW
Standing inventory today, a fraction of what is being built.
463.5 MW
Under construction, more than quadruple the prior year.
96% preleased
Of that pipeline, before it opens.
1.8% vacancy
A record low for the market.
Source: CBRE on Central Texas and CBRE North America Data Center Trends H2 2025. Figures describe the combined Austin and San Antonio market, not a specific facility.
A 463.5 MW pipeline reads like abundance and behaves like scarcity. At 96% preleased, roughly 19 MW of everything under construction is uncommitted. Announced capacity in Central Texas is not available capacity, and the gap between the two is wider here than in any market we cover.
Austin and San Antonio are two markets, not one
Every report on Central Texas adds the two cities together, this page included, because that is how the capacity is counted. A buyer cannot use them that way. The downtowns are about eighty miles apart. They sit under different city-owned utilities, Austin Energy in one and CPS Energy in the other. They draw water from entirely different sources. And the split is lopsided in both directions at once: San Antonio holds the interconnection, Austin's outskirts hold the construction.
The practical test is simple. If your users or your other systems sit in Austin, a San Antonio building costs you the round trip to San Antonio on every request, permanently. That is fine for backup and archival and wrong for anything latency sensitive. Decide which of the two cities the requirement actually has to sit near before you look at a single floor plan, because half the inventory on this page is the wrong answer to that question.
Where the market actually is, submarket by submarket
San Antonio
30 facilities, more than any other submarket here, and effectively all of the network depth. H5 Data Centers San Antonio alone carries 21 of the market's 74 network presences. Come here for carrier choice and for space in a building that already exists.
Austin proper
18 facilities and the second interconnection cluster, around Data Foundry Texas 1 and CyrusOne Met 2. Constrained on land and on power inside the city, which is why enterprise-sized deals happen here and megawatt-scale ones do not.
Taylor and Hutto
21 facilities between them, almost all planned or under construction. Oncor built out eastern Williamson County transmission for Samsung's fab and the hyperscale developers followed the wire. This is the greenfield, and it is the part most exposed to the connection freeze.
Cedar Creek and Bastrop County
9 facilities and the largest single buildings on the board, including two planned EdgeConneX buildings of 960,000 SF each. Different county, different politics, and not the Austin metro's serving utility. Confirm who delivers the power before assuming an Austin answer applies.
Round Rock
6 facilities, including a 300,000 SF Sabey building under construction. The middle option: north of Austin's constraints, south of Taylor's delivery risk.
Facility counts and clustering come from our verified inventory and network counts from PeeringDB, both set out in full further down this page. A verified building is not a statement that space inside it is available. See what verified covers.
What SB 6 does to a requirement of 75 MW or more
Texas Senate Bill 6, signed in June 2025, created a separate regime for large loads in ERCOT. The threshold is 75 MW. Below it you are an ordinary large commercial customer. At or above it, four things apply.
- An initial transmission screening study costs at least $100,000, paid up front.
- Any load interconnected after 31 December 2025 must carry equipment that lets ERCOT curtail it directly during a firm load shed event. Critical industrial and critical natural gas facilities are exempt. A data center is not.
- You must disclose whether you are pursuing a substantially similar request anywhere else in Texas, and whether winning that one would change or withdraw this one.
- Netting an on-site generator against the load needs a 120 day ERCOT study and a 60 day PUCT approval.
The implementing rule, 16 TAC 25.194, is still a draft. It was published on 12 March 2026 and comments closed on 17 April. As proposed it adds a non-refundable interconnection fee of $50,000 per MW, financial security at the same rate, study fees of $100,000 up to 250 MW and $300,000 above it, and full customer payment of interconnection costs. None of that is settled, which is the point. The price of large-load power in ERCOT is not a knowable number today.
Most colocation tenants never sign under this regime, because the operator is the interconnecting customer rather than you. It still reaches your rate. An operator carrying curtailment obligations and per-MW security has a cost floor, and a floor turns up eventually in the power clause of an agreement. Ask whether your building can be curtailed, what that does to your SLA, and who carries the cost when it happens.
Statute summarised from Bracewell. Draft rule status from Greenberg Traurig, March 2026.
Water splits this market in half
The two cities do not share a supply and their positions are not comparable. San Antonio draws on the Edwards Aquifer, which spent more than two years under Stage 3 restrictions before the San Antonio Water System eased to Stage 2 on 4 August 2026, with the aquifer at 650.3 feet. Austin draws on the Highland Lakes through the LCRA and has sat in its baseline Conservation Stage since September 2025, with combined storage well above the trigger for Stage 1.
That asymmetry is unlikely to hold, and it is now a permitting question rather than an engineering one. Water use is one of the five things the state audit asks about. Two San Antonio data centers used a reported 463 million gallons across 2023 and 2024 while the region was in drought, compiled from San Antonio Water System records, and that is the kind of figure that attracts a permit condition.
Ask for the cooling method by name rather than for a PUE. Closed loop and air cooled buildings carry almost no water exposure and cost more to run. Evaporative buildings are cheaper and carry the regulatory risk. In this market, in this year, establish which one you are buying before you compare two rates.
Drought stages from the San Antonio Water System via Texas Public Radio and Austin Water. The consumption figure is second-hand reporting of SAWS records rather than a filing we hold, and is published here.
Pricing is moving, especially at scale
CBRE reports pricing at levels last seen in 2011 and 2012, above $200 per kW per month, with deployments of 10 MW and above rising by up to 19% since the second half of 2024. That is the reverse of the traditional pattern where larger commitments earn deeper discounts.
The reason is straightforward. Large contiguous blocks are the scarce product, AI occupiers are competing for them, and operators have no reason to discount something they can prelease at ask. If your requirement is large, expect to pay for the privilege rather than negotiate it down.
- Separate the rate for standing capacity from the rate for a future phase. They are different markets.
- Ask what the escalator looks like over the full term. Fast-growing markets reprice hard at renewal.
- Confirm the ERCOT interconnection position for any capacity that is not yet energized.
- Price Dallas-Fort Worth for the same requirement. It is the same state, the same grid operator and a much deeper market.
Grid resilience is still a Texas-specific design question
ERCOT runs its own interconnection process, separate from the rest of the country, and that speed is a large part of why the pipeline here grew so fast. The same isolation is why weather-driven grid events are a design consideration in Texas in a way they are not elsewhere. Ask how the facility performed during past extreme weather, what on-site generation and fuel arrangements exist, and how long the site rides through a regional event without resupply. That question now has a second half, because on-site generation is also what exempts a project from the connection freeze.
When Central Texas is right, and when it is the wrong choice
It is right when you need central US coverage in a building that already has power, when Texas operations or workforce justify the location on their own, or when the requirement is small enough to fit the uncommitted remainder rather than needing a campus built for it.
It is the wrong choice if you are buying the pipeline. Roughly 19 MW of the 463.5 MW under construction is uncommitted, and the freeze has removed the ability to add to that on a known timetable. It is also the wrong choice if you need network optionality: 74 network presences across two cities, more than a quarter of them inside one San Antonio building, is thin next to Dallas-Fort Worth.
Run Dallas-Fort Worth in parallel from the first call. Same state, same grid operator, same SB 6 regime, roughly five times the standing inventory. The negotiation you actually have in Central Texas is against a DFW alternative, not against another Austin building.
Shortlist energised buildings only, and get the uncommitted megawatts named in writing, building by building. Treat any delivery date that depends on a new ERCOT connection as unknown until the audit closes, because it is. Then ask the three questions this market turns on: which utility serves the building, whether the load can be curtailed, and what the cooling method does to your water exposure. The general version of that list is the RFP checklist.
What has been announced in Austin and San Antonio
Announcements are not filings. Nobody has to build what they announce, the figure is the one the developer chose to publish, and the date moves. They are here because megawatts are what a requirement is measured in, and because the size of what is coming changes who will take your call. Every figure below links to a published report that states it, and was checked against at least one other independent report before it was written down.
| Capacity | Operator | Project | What was announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 GW | Tract | Caldwell County park | 1,515 acres between Austin and San Antonio, 360 MW grid connection due 2028. Announced capacity at full build-out |
| 1.2 GW | CloudBurst | San Marcos campus | 706 acres in Guadalupe County, three 400 MW phases, first from 2026. Announced capacity at full build-out |
| 600 MW | Skybox Datacenters and Prologis | PowerCampus Austin, Hutto | Up to 4 million SF, 25 miles north of downtown Austin |
| 300 MW | Rowan Digital | Cinco campus, Medina County | 440 acres, fully operational expected 2027 |
Announced capacity is collected by hand from trade reporting and company statements, and each figure links to the report it came from. It is kept apart from the permit record above and never added to it: one is a document a jurisdiction issued, the other is a plan a company published. Neither is availability.
Every Austin and San Antonio facility we track
107 data centers across Austin and San Antonio, from our verified inventory. It is the layer that says whether a building exists yet, which no permit record answers directly.
| Status | Facilities | What it means for a search |
|---|---|---|
| Operational | 30 | Standing and running. The only layer that can hold a requirement this year |
| Under construction | 14 | Steel is up. Reachable for a date 6 to 18 months out, and usually pre-leasing now |
| Planned | 63 | Announced or entitled, not yet built. Treat every date on these as a forecast |
| Building area on file | 11,595,402 SF | Across the 46 facilities where a size is recorded, of 107 |
| Largest single building | 960,000 SF | EdgeConneX, Cedar Creek |
Operators with the most facilities here: CyrusOne (13), EdgeConneX (9), Skybox Datacenters (9), Iron Mountain Data Centers (7), Switch (7), KDC (6), Stream Data Centers (6), CloudHQ (5), Rowan Digital Infrastructure (4), Tract (4).
Where they cluster: San Antonio (30), Austin (18), Taylor (14), Cedar Creek (9), Hutto (7), Round Rock (6).
The largest buildings coming to this market
77 facilities here are under construction or planned. These are the ten largest by floor area, and a size on file is not a promise of a delivery date.
| Operator | Status | Building size | Where |
|---|---|---|---|
| EdgeConneX | Planned | 960,000 SF | Cedar Creek, TX |
| EdgeConneX | Planned | 960,000 SF | Cedar Creek, TX |
| Skybox Datacenters | Planned | 735,000 SF | Hutto, TX |
| Skybox Datacenters | Planned | 735,000 SF | Hutto, TX |
| Skybox Datacenters | Planned | 735,000 SF | Hutto, TX |
| Vantage Data Centers | Under Construction | 432,800 SF | San Antonio, TX |
| Vantage Data Centers | Under Construction | 360,000 SF | San Antonio, TX |
| Sabey Data Centers | Under Construction | 300,000 SF | Round Rock, TX |
| Stream Data Centers | Planned | 300,000 SF | San Antonio, TX |
| Stream Data Centers | Planned | 300,000 SF | San Antonio, TX |
From our verified inventory rather than from a public record, so these rows carry no filing link and street addresses are held back. These buildings are verified, which is not the same as their space being available: every facility above may be full, pre-leased, or closed to your size. Finding out is a call, not a lookup. See what a verified building does and does not mean.
Who is actually plugged in across Austin and San Antonio
A building existing and a building being connected are different facts, and only one of them decides whether your traffic can get where it needs to go cheaply. These figures come from PeeringDB, which the network operators themselves maintain, so every row below links to the building's own public entry.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Buildings listed | 19 | Registered in PeeringDB across Austin and San Antonio, by 14 operators |
| Buildings with a network present | 16 | 3 carry no network presence, which usually means single tenant or simply unregistered |
| Network presences | 74 | Counted per building, so a carrier in three buildings counts three times |
| Internet exchange presences | 6 | Where you can reach many networks through one port instead of many cross-connects |
| Carrier presences | 16 | The physical transport choice you can buy without leaving the building |
| In the densest building | 28% | H5 Data Centers San Antonio holds 21 of the market's network presences |
The most connected buildings here
| Networks | Building | Operator | Exchanges | Carriers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 | H5 Data Centers San Antonio | H5 Data Centers | 1 | 2 |
| 15 | Data Foundry Texas 1 | Data Foundry, Inc. | 1 | 1 |
| 6 | CyrusOne Austin (Met 2) | CyrusOne Inc. | 1 | 2 |
| 4 | CyrusOne San Antonio | CyrusOne Inc. | 0 | 2 |
| 4 | DataBank Austin (AUS1) | DataBank, Ltd. | 0 | 0 |
| 4 | Element Critical Austin AUS1 | Element Critical, LLC | 1 | 1 |
| 4 | LightEdge Austin 2 (AUS2) | LightEdge Solutions | 0 | 0 |
| 3 | Data Foundry Austin 1 | Data Foundry, Inc. | 1 | 0 |
From PeeringDB, which is maintained by the network operators present in these buildings rather than by the landlords, which is what makes it worth more than a directory. Two limits. Entries are voluntary, so a building showing no networks may be single tenant or may simply never have registered. And a network being present says nothing about whether the building has space, power or a price for you: that is still a call.
What the public construction record shows in Austin and San Antonio
TCEQ air permits filed in the Bexar and Travis county corridors. Every figure below is a count of filings we collected ourselves, and every row links to the record it came from.
| Measure | Figure | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| Filings we track | 167 | Deduplicated. Across 3 sources, May 1985 to June 2026 |
| Filed in the last 12 months | 7 | The live rate of construction activity, which is the number that moves |
| Tenant fit-out filings | 52 | A customer is landing in a named building. The strongest signal in the set |
| Distinct addresses | 103 | Separate sites in the record, not separate buildings |
| Largest capacity in the record | 2.25 MW | Stated on 1 of 167 filings. Capacity is rarely published, so this is a floor, not a market total |
| Largest floor area filed | 775,644 SF | One permit, not a campus total. Floor area is published far more often than capacity |
| Operators we can name | 6 | 34 of 167 filings name a recognizable operator. The rest name an engineer, a builder or a holding company |
Operators appearing by name: Vantage Data Centers (14), Microsoft (9), Switch (5), QTS (3), Amazon Web Services (2), STACK Infrastructure (1).
The filings that state a capacity
Most permits never mention megawatts. These do, and the basis matters: a figure the applicant stated for the project is a different claim from a generator nameplate, which is backup plant rather than sellable load.
| Capacity | Basis | The filing |
|---|---|---|
| 2.25 MW | Capacity stated in the filing | Interior remodel to existing Data Center to replacement of six 2250 KVA UPS System including batteries. |
The most recent filings on the record
| Filed | Named on the filing | What it says | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| 30 June 2026 | Not an identifiable operator | Bexar Data Center | Type not stated |
| 9 February 2026 | Microsoft | Microsoft Sat 8990 Data Center Project Site | Power and cooling |
| 21 November 2025 | STACK Infrastructure | Stack Equipment Sa | Power and cooling |
| 8 October 2025 | Vantage Data Centers | SPC Site Work - Vantage Data Center -TX-22 Site Work Only-5207 ROGERS RD | Type not stated |
| 6 October 2025 | Not an identifiable operator | ePlan: Commercial Expedited Review - Finish out to Expand Data Center into existing Shell Areas. Scope of Work Includes... | Power and cooling |
| 2 October 2025 | QTS | QTS SAT2 DC1 | Power and cooling |
| 30 September 2025 | Not an identifiable operator | ePlan: Commercial Expedited Review - [APPROVED] New Construction of Exterior Pad for Modular Data Center Foundation. | Power and cooling |
| 8 September 2025 | Not an identifiable operator | ePlan Review: Remodel Data Hall -1st Floor | Tenant fit-out |
Collected from City of San Antonio open permit data, TCEQ air permit search and City of Austin issued construction permits. A permit proves that construction is happening. It does not prove that space is available, and no public filing anywhere discloses what is contractible at a named building. That answer comes from an operator call, which is the part we do by hand. See how we verify capacity.