many of the data centers are being built with natural gas generators on site, and they are using excess gas from the oil drilling.
Texas has not improved energy efficiency standards since the 2021 blackout, and have resisted all attempts at increasing the governance of the gas generation.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas' "Capacity, Demand and Reserves report" even details a scenario in which massive energy demand growth in the state surpasses available supply in 2026.
https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2025/02/12/CapacityDemandan...
Now add data centre demand in a climate where passive-cooling isn't viable and inter-state redundancy is non-existent.
Despite all the yapping, there's a crap ton of (ever growing) solar and wind and battery storage and what not in Texas. And ERCOT does have a power link with the neighboring SPP.
https://www.spp.org/documents/71831/ercot-spp%20coordination...
No one wants the grid to collapse after all (except you I guess, for whatever reason).
> The Texas Interconnection is tied to the Eastern Interconnection with a 220 MW DC tie near Oklaunion, and a 600 MW DC tie near Monticello, and is tied to NERC (North American Electric Reliability Corporation) systems in Mexico with a 300 MW DC tie near McAllen, and a 100 MW VFT tie near Laredo.[29] There is one AC tie switch in Dayton, Texas
Positive ROI becomes present if Texas has large amounts of nondispatchable power and the neighboring areas do not have the same. So if Texas builds more wind and solar than they can consume themselves, then it makes sense to invest in more interconnection capacity. But that's predicted on excessive production first.
Finally, let's just say they built 70 GW of interconnection, because you seen to think that number is important. Do you think Louisiana and Arkansas have that much generation and transmission capacity themselves? Let alone EXCESS?
Washington and Oregon are on the same grid, with about peak generation of 31 GW and 18 GW, yet only about 7 GW of transfer capacity exists, and it's only that high because of sales to California because of seasonal hydroelectric oversupply, an oversupply which doesn't exist in Texas, Arkansas, or Louisiana.
Significantly higher interconnection capacity does not yet make financial sense. They're right to not yet waste money on them.
The comment from @piltdownman merely clarified that Texas is for the most part an isolated grid. That if demand matches predictions from our state regulator, Texas needs to continue massively increasing energy supply.
Enron fiasco put a local power company here in WA in insurmountable debt because they couldn't ship power to California because the lines were already overloaded. If you build a major new power-consuming plant in Washington, you'll need to get power from someplace closer than half the width of Texas (and only even that far because historically we had coal power plants in Montana, so there's existing long-distance transmission).
I'm not saying they haven't made mistakes, but saying a place had "no major connections" is both wrong and ignores why. El Paso has "major" connections to New Mexico. It shouldn't be surprising Dallas doesn't have "major" connections to New Mexico, just like Denver CO doesn't to Portland OR.
El Paso is not part of the Texas grid (ERCOT):
https://www.epa.gov/green-power-markets/us-grid-regions
Neither are the panhandle nor the northeastern portion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Interconnection
Most of Texas is on this grid, not connected to any other states. The total amount of power that can flow between the Texas Interconnect and the rest of the US grid is a small fraction of the Texas grid's demand. That was the point being made by the original commenter.
Anywhere else in the transmission network that has excess generation capacity. If the biggest state benefits from interconnection, why wouldn't the second biggest benefit too?
Daily demand is cyclic, even with no additional capacity added, being connected to grids in other timezones that have different demand peak-times is a net win.
Chips can also be water cooled, and Texas borders an endless supply of water in the Gulf of America.
https://news.ftcpublications.com/core/coastal-cities-test-se...
I have no particular objection to building datacenters there.
All that said, I think you're being real hand-wave-y here. The climate in Houston is materially different than it is in Dallas. So there's likely a reason these companies have been locating their enormously expensive assets where they have been locating them.
Houston floods. Often.
Houston gets hit by Hurricanes.
Houston is hot and humid with relatively high ground water tables.
Don't even get me started on the power and the durability issues arising from the use of sea water.
There's a lot to work out there. You put what you can afford to lose in Houston, but you don't bet the farm on coastal Texas. You just can't do that if you want resilient infrastructure.
Im not saying it can't be done, but building near the ocean has its own set of drawbacks and costs.
Its easy to offer hypothetical solutions for a far when details are amis. It's another thing to deal with local politics
Better for the extra natural gas to power data centers than to "accidentally" leak into the atmosphere .
I'm guessing this is an easy win when you don't live or work near one, and not the one breathing the resulting particulates and nitrogen compounds.