Batch zero stops being theoretical on July 11. That is the day ERCOT’s rule for connecting large new customers takes effect. The new policy replaces a process that involved studying each giant load independently, then ordering restudies when new giant loads joined the queue, leaving projects stuck in a serial loop. Two prior episodes of this show traced how the new rule was designed. This one asks the people who connect the load what to fix before the next round. Already projects are sitting in the interconnection queue as new regulatory deadlines loom. ERCOT figures show more than 445 gigawatts of large loads in the process, and the rule sorts them into base load, studied load, and excluded load. Developers have until July 10 and July 24 to meet certain filing deadlines, and the full batch study is targeted for early April. The policy also shifts more of the analysis from individual utilities onto ERCOT. CenterPoint has been connecting large loads in Houston for decades. That experience drives a question the design phase mostly deferred: does a 75-megawatt cutoff for loads to participate in the program fit the manufacturing and industrial loads that move at the speed of business? On this episode of the Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Caitlin Smith, chair of ERCOT’s Technical Advisory Committee and senior vice president at Jupiter Power, and Jason Ryan, executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs at CenterPoint Energy. Smith walks through how stakeholders developed the rules on a compressed timeline. Ryan presses the forward question of whether the 75-megawatt threshold and an annual batch process fit the loads Houston routinely connects. Ryan’s concern is timing. When the batch becomes “the long pole in the tent,” he says, developers with real projects start to walk. The conversation works through: * WL-PUN and PCLR, the withdrawal-limited private-use-network and provisional controllable-load resource programs ERCOT is repurposing to fit more load onto the current grid. * The 75-megawatt cutoff, why Ryan questions whether mid-sized manufacturing loads belong in the batch at all, and the risk of projects sizing themselves at 74.9 to stay out. * Non-firm service and reliability, how a load that agrees to curtail differs from the century-old obligation to serve, and what testing CenterPoint needs before it trusts the switch. * What is permanent versus triage, which parts of batch zero survive into batch one and beyond as the Texas Legislature returns next year. New to the batch zero mini-series? Start with Eric Goff on how batch zero took shape and Tiffany Wu on the mechanics. How ERCOT sets the threshold and batch cadence will determine which loads get power on their own timeline and which wait for the next cycle. Timestamps: * 00:00 - Introductions: Caitlin Smith and Jason Ryan * 02:43 - What Batch Zero is and why ERCOT needs it now * 05:14 - Houston's diverse large loads, not just data centers * 08:13 - Timeline: the July 11 effective date and key deadlines * 10:44 - Base load, studied load, excluded load: winners and losers * 12:55 - Inside TAC: compromises, new stakeholders, and fairness * 16:10 - Does the queue mean a transmission build-out? * 19:01 - The real number: CenterPoint's 40 to 50 GW prediction * 23:18 - New constructs: WL-PUN and PCLR explained * 28:13 - Non-firm service, reliability, and trusting curtailment * 32:01 - Tracking success: what is permanent versus triage * 36:07 - The 75-megawatt threshold and how often to run a batch * 43:38 - Data centers, the final timeline, and what comes next Resources: People & Organizations * Joshua Rhodes (LinkedIn) * Webber Energy Group (Website - LinkedIn) * IdeaSmiths (Website - LinkedIn) * Caitlin Smith (LinkedIn) * Jupiter Power (Website - LinkedIn) * Jason Ryan (LinkedIn) * CenterPoint Energy (Website - LinkedIn) * ERCOT (Large Load Integration) Company & Industry News * ERCOT Again Revising Large Load Interconnection Process Books & Articles Discussed * Texas Senate Bill 6, 89th Legislature * PGRR145, Batch Zero Process for Large Load Interconnections Related Podcasts by Energy Capital * Batch Zero, Explained with Tiffany Wu * How Texas plans to serve ‘infinite demand’ * Open Season vs. Batch Zero with Travis Kavulla Transcript: Joshua Rhodes: Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Energy Capital Podcast. I’m really excited today to have not one but two guests to talk about kind of what’s going on in the ERCOT Batch Zero process and kind of how that may continue to play out. So today on the podcast, we’ve got Caitlin Smith. Caitlin has a BA in econ from University of Texas and a JD Law from Penn State. She’s a policy consultant for CLEAResult for going on counsel at Jewell & Associates. She’s a vice president of AB Power Advisors and is currently the Senior Vice President for Federal and Regulatory Affairs at Jupiter Power, one of the largest pure play energy storage companies in the US. But she also is the current chair of ERCOT’s Technical Advisory Committee, the highest committee comprised of stakeholders, which makes recommendations to the ERCOT board. And that’s going to really come in handy today as we talk about one of the biggest policy shifts that’s working its way through the system. We also have Jason Ryan. Jason Ryan has his Bachelor’s of Business Administration and JD from the University of Texas. He was a Global Projects Associate at Baker Botts, managing partner at Ryan Glover LLP. And he’s also the information dominance warfare officer for the US Navy, which I kind of just want to stop and talk about that. If you can, you may not be able to talk about that. But now he’s the executive vice president of regulatory services and government affairs at CenterPoint Energy. Caitlin and Jason, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast. Jason Ryan: Thank you for having us. Caitlin Smith: Thanks, Josh. Joshua Rhodes: I’m really excited. So I’ve got two lawyers and two government affairs folks here today. So we’ll see how bad I do at managing this. Great. It’s gonna go great. But I know we’re under a bit of a time crunch, so we’ll get started because Caitlin, you’ve got a date for Elmo’s Got Moves. Is that right? Elmo’s Got The Moves. Okay. Caitlin Smith: Almost got the moves. Almost got the moves. I’m seeing it tonight. I don’t know when this will air, but it’s in Austin Friday in San Antonio Sunday. Joshua Rhodes: That’s some free advertisement there for almost got moves. But anyway, so we’ll go ahead and get started. And so the arc of this podcast is really I want to kind of catch up with what’s going on with the batch zero process. We’ve done two episodes, which we’ll link in the show notes, one with Eric Goff and one with Tiffany Wu, where we kind of looked at the overall kind of structure of the batch zero process and then with Tiffany got into kind of some of the details. But one of the things that it really was brought out, at least for my knowledge, during those podcasts, was We really had a framework for how things were going, but we hadn’t filled in all the details. And so I was just curious, Caitlin, if you could kind of refresh us on what batch zero is, where it stands, and why do we need it right now? Caitlin Smith: Sure. And the impetus for me coming on, or one of them was Eric Goff said that the demand for load is infinite. I don’t believe it’s infinite. So I wanted to come on and correct. But maybe Jason thinks it’s infinite. So we could debate that. So batch zero, previously in ERCOT, there was not a uniform process for load interconnect. You know, before, I don’t know, six, seven years ago, nobody was really thinking about. Connecting these large loads when I was consulting, you know, we would have a call about a gigawatt hydrogen load or something that wanted to come online. This was starting in 2020. ERCOT hadn’t really heard about it or contemplated it at that point. So in the last five or six years, we had a major change to the system, which was ERCOT was actually seeing these applications for very large loads to connect and a lot of them What happened then was for the utilities, it was just either too much to process or they didn’t really know how to process it. Jason can correct me. And I think the other thing was there was not a uniform way amongst utilities on how to process these studies. And so they would study a load, another load would come on in their area, or maybe not even in their area. And ERCOT would say, No, we have to restudy. So people were getting caught in this infinite loop. So we are changing from that serialized process to a cluster or a batch, as we’re calling it, process where you can study a whole group of loads to make sure the system can accommodate the whole amount or the whole allocated amount of it at once and you can have a clear study. The other thing that does is really shift more responsibility to ERCOT. Before this was really each TSP. Was performing these studies and now there is a much larger ERCO component. And so batch zero is our way from transitioning from the status quo to the batch Joshua Rhodes: process. Got it. And Jason, I guess the old process, like large loads were coming to transmission service providers like CenterPoint. Can you give us a feel for like when did the problem start to feel intractable in terms of like you going from having maybe one load at a time to dozens or hundreds of loads at a time? Can you give us a feel for when that started to come along to push this new process or to push talking about getting a new process? Jason Ryan: Yeah, and so maybe I can answer it from a general perspective and then I can answer it from my company’s perspective. Sure. Because I think those timelines are a little bit different or the experiences are a little bit different. Between two years, you know, eighteen months, two years ago, I
