Senate committee adopts substitute to Senate Bill 6 to tighten rules for large electricity customers

Senate Committee on Business & Commerce Chair Senator Schwertner opened a brief October committee meeting saying, “This is a quick meeting for the purpose of discussing and voting out on the committee substitute to Senate Bill 6.”

The committee unanimously adopted the committee substitute to Senate Bill 6, a measure that would change how Texas regulators treat very large electricity customers — including data centers and other “large loads” — by creating an interconnection charge for new connections, tightening forecasting and reporting requirements to ERCOT, and requiring reliability reviews before existing on‑site generation is removed from the grid.

Why it matters: Committee members framed the changes as shifts meant to protect homeowners and small businesses from higher costs and to reduce reliability risk as large, fast‑growing loads come online. Sponsor Senator King said the substitute closes loopholes left in the original filing and gives the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) and ERCOT rulemaking authority to set formulas and implementation details.

Senator King, the bill sponsor, walked the committee through the major substantive changes. He described a new “interconnection charge” — likened to a local impact fee — that the PUC and ERCOT would set by rule to allocate…