Texas suspends data center grid connections, Denmark faces similar scenario

Projects with a combined capacity of 474 GW are waiting in the queue to connect to the Texas power grid, five times Texas’s peak demand. Most applications were submitted by companies building data centers for artificial intelligence. In August, the governor therefore ordered connections to be suspended until it is verified how many of the projects are actually viable. Denmark faced similar pressure on its grid half a year earlier, where the application queue even exceeded the entire country’s peak demand eightfold. The battle over who can gain access to electricity is thus becoming as major an energy-sector issue as artificial intelligence itself.

According to the September edition of the Short-Term Energy Outlook, published by the analytical agency of the US Department of Energy (EIA) at the beginning of September, electricity consumption in the West South Central region, which includes Texas as well as Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, will rise to 761 TWh in 2026 and 790 TWh in 2027. Compared with the August estimate, this represents a reduction of 0.5% and 4.7%, respectively. Nevertheless, this region is expected to account for the largest share of total electricity sales growth in the US of all regions. The EIA directly links the lower forecast to the suspension of new data center connections to the Texas grid.

The issue has attracted media attention since the beginning of August, when Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered grid operator ERCOT and regulator PUCT to conduct a comprehensive audit of projects waiting in the connection queue. According to his letter, the application queue totals 474 GW of capacity, roughly five times the system’s previous peak-demand record. Data centers account for around 90% of these applications. The audit results are due by December 2026.

A European precedent from spring

The issue of grid connections and data centers is not limited to the United States. Denmark has faced a similar situation since March 2026, with grids reaching their limits. At the time, Danish transmission system operator Energinet temporarily suspended the conclusion of new grid connection agreements due to the boom in applications. The queue contained projects with a combined capacity of around 60 GW, including 14 GW of data centers, while peak demand across Denmark is only around 7 GW.

The Danish government therefore announced in spring that it wanted to set a statutory order of priority for access to limited grid capacity. Under a plan described by Eurofound in June, healthcare, defence and households applying to connect electric vehicle chargers or heat pumps are to be given priority, while large data centers would be placed at the end of the queue.

Organisations across regions warn of tension between demand and grid capacity

The International Energy Agency had previously described similar tension between grids and growing data center demand in its report, according to which global electricity consumption by data centers is set to double to 945 TWh by 2030, slightly more than Japan consumes today.

Europe is not without its problems either. Alongside Denmark, other European countries are considering stricter rules for data center connections, according to earlier reports, as producers of green hydrogen, batteries and low-emission steel are also now competing for the same grid capacity.

North American grid reliability organisation NERC warned of the technical risks posed by data center growth in July. According to NERC, several incidents occurred in 2025 in which computational loads exceeding 1,000 MW unexpectedly disconnected from the grid during normally manageable transmission line faults, creating a new risk to system frequency stability.

Similar concerns about transmission grid stability are also being voiced in Europe, where ENTSO-E, in its latest resource adequacy outlook, warns of challenges in maintaining reliable electricity supplies over the next decade.