Texas is famous for running its own grid, ERCOT. It is less known that parts of the state are not on it. Most of the Panhandle and the South Plains belong to the Southwest Power Pool (SPP). El Paso sits in the Western Interconnection (WECC). Parts of East Texas are in MISO. A site on the wrong side of that line has a different market, a different interconnection process and a different queue.
How much of the land is outside ERCOT
Voltane screens 183,523 Texas sites that pass its hard filters. 80% are inside ERCOT or very likely inside it (116,854 by utility territory, 30,837 inferred from nearby ERCOT plants, queue projects and lines). 27,627 (15.1%) are outside it. For another 8,205 the evidence is mixed, and Voltane says the grid is undetermined rather than guess.
Sites passing Voltane's hard filters outside ERCOT (21,926 SPP, 4,148 MISO, 260 WECC, 1,293 served by utilities in more than one). Data (JSON)
The land outside ERCOT is not marginal. 4,321 of those sites have a flat block large enough for a 100 MW project on its own, most of them in the SPP counties of the Panhandle and the South Plains.
| County | Sites outside ERCOT | Grid |
|---|---|---|
| Lamb | 2,596 | SPP |
| Hockley | 2,073 | SPP |
| Lubbock | 1,770 | SPP |
| Lynn | 1,200 | SPP |
| Yoakum | 1,134 | SPP |
| Bailey | 1,099 | SPP |
| Parmer | 947 | SPP |
| Carson | 842 | SPP |
| Deaf Smith | 804 | SPP |
| Panola | 773 | several |
| Bowie | 742 | SPP |
| Ochiltree | 714 | SPP |
Sites passing Voltane's hard filters, by county; the grid most of them are on. Data (JSON)
Why it matters for the queue
Voltane reads interconnection competition in Texas from ERCOT's own queue report. That report covers ERCOT only. Near the grid boundary, it can show ERCOT projects a few miles from a site that will never connect to ERCOT, and far from the boundary it shows nothing at all. Either way, "no ERCOT projects nearby" is not "no competition" for a site in SPP or WECC.
So for every Texas site outside ERCOT, or whose grid is undetermined, Voltane now marks queue competition as unknown, never zero, and names the site's grid in its panel, its report and in Ask Voltane's briefs. Before this change, 3,058 of those sites showed ERCOT queue figures from across the boundary. Unknown data earns a site nothing in an Ask Voltane brief and becomes an open question to check with the utility and the right queue.
How to read a site outside ERCOT
- Check the grid first. The site panel names it (for example "Outside ERCOT (SPP)"). Interconnection runs through that grid's own process, not ERCOT's.
- Queue competition is unknown, not low. Look up that grid's queue before reading anything into the absence of ERCOT projects.
- Distance to a line is still distance. It is never interconnection or capacity, on any grid.
- Grid is inferred from utility territories. They are county and place shapes, not certificated boundaries: verify the grid with the serving utility.
Screening only — not a site suitability determination.