Texas staff back Amazon's plan to draw 1.2GW from the Comanche Peak nuclear plant

The staff of the Public Utility Commission of Texas has recommended approving Vistra's plan to serve a 1,200MW load for Amazon Data Services directly from its Comanche Peak nuclear plant, subject to the conditions proposed by the grid operator, ERCOT. The commission will decide on written filings after cancelling the hearing on Oct. 26.

Amazon will build the load on land that Comanche Peak Power Company, a Vistra unit, owns and leases to it. It will connect to the two-unit, roughly 2,400MW plant in Somervell County through customer-owned lines, and its use will be netted against the plant's output at the existing grid meters. The contract was signed before Sept. 1, 2025.

Amazon plans to switch on the first 100MW around October 2027 and the full 1,200MW around October 2031, according to ERCOT's study. Once it is running, the plant would still send 1,200MW to 1,260MW to the grid, depending on the season.

ERCOT found no transmission violations that remained after redispatching renewable generation, and no stranded transmission assets. The cost to the system shows up in reserve margins. Through winter 2030/31 the cut ranges from 0.09 to 0.83 percentage points. At full load, ERCOT's corrected estimate, filed on Oct. 29, is 0.86 to 0.91 points for fall 2031 and 0.69 to 0.74 points for the winter after, down from more than 2 points in the original report.

ERCOT's conditions are the price of approval. Within 30 minutes of an instruction during a grid emergency, the Amazon load must be cut or the plant's capacity made available to ERCOT, a window that drops to 10 minutes if Amazon confirms it can curtail that fast. ERCOT will give at least 60 minutes' notice when practicable, a term ERCOT's Oct. 29 correction confirmed it is keeping. Amazon may not offer that flexibility into ERCOT or utility demand-response programs.

Vistra and Amazon accept the substance. They have committed to on-site backup generation at least as large as the load, not synchronized to the grid, and to run on it if ERCOT asks during an energy emergency. Their fight is over form. They asked the commission to rely on those commitments instead of imposing conditions, and to declare the arrangement lawful and shielded from later objections.

ERCOT and the staff both said no. ERCOT argued it is unclear the commission could enforce one-sided commitments the way it enforces its own conditions, and said imposing them would be consistent with the four similar cases already decided. The staff said the order should match those cases so compliance can be monitored the same way, and that a blanket finding of lawfulness would be wrong when matters such as federal nuclear rules sit outside the case. United Cooperative Services, an intervening co-op, also opposed the finding.

In rebuttal testimony filed on Nov. 2, Vistra's Claudia Morrow said the companies had expected the final order to bind them to their commitments anyway. She argued that an explicit finding of lawfulness would help before they invest more capital in the project.

The law gives the commission 60 days from receiving ERCOT's study, which was filed on Oct. 13, putting a decision due around Dec. 12*. Approval would commit half of the plant's output to one customer, while leaving ERCOT a claim on that output in an emergency. No price appears in the public filings.

* Rackline estimate, calculated from PURA section 39.169 as described in ERCOT's Oct. 13, 2026 study report: 60 days after Oct. 13, 2026.