Texas PUC Agenda Includes Amazon's 1,200-Megawatt Comanche Peak Hookup, With a December Deadline

Amazon wants to plug a 1,200-megawatt data center campus directly into a nuclear plant in Somervell County, Texas. The state's utility regulator has to decide whether to let it.

The Public Utility Commission of Texas had the request on its Nov. 5 agenda. No ruling has been announced. The deadline that started when the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) filed its study on Oct. 13 expires in mid-December.

What Amazon is building

The project is called Project Spectrum and is led by Amazon Data Services. It covers about 435 acres near Glen Rose on land owned by Vistra, beside the two-reactor Comanche Peak plant. A tax abatement application describes up to 18 two-story buildings and roughly $5 billion in investment.

The campus is tied to a 20-year power purchase agreement for up to 1,200 MW from Comanche Peak. Power would move over dedicated transmission lines. Amazon also plans backup generation on site.

Comanche Peak Power Company, a Vistra subsidiary, filed for net metering approval in February. That arrangement lets the plant and the customer share a connection point so that only the net flow reaches the public grid. The filing was amended in May to name Amazon Data Services as the customer.

The load would start at roughly 100 MW in late 2027 and reach the full 1,200 MW by 2031, according to the filing. Amazon's timeline for full ramp-up runs to 2032.

The ERCOT conditions

ERCOT, which runs the state grid, recommended approval with strings attached. The data center must cut its draw entirely within 30 minutes when ERCOT directs it to. It must be capable of disconnection at the breaker. And it must stay out of the markets that pay large customers to reduce demand.

One dispute is still open. Vistra objects to ERCOT classifying Comanche Peak as an existing stand-alone generation facility as of Sept. 1, 2025. That label shapes what the arrangement is worth, and the commission has not resolved it. The commission listed the item on its Oct. 15 agenda and did not reach it.

Money, jobs and water

Amazon says the campus will support at least 550 full-time jobs at wages well above the county average, plus thousands of construction jobs. Site preparation is already underway, the company says.

The Somervell County commissioners court moved forward with a Chapter 381 development agreement. The state law lets counties negotiate incentives directly with developers. It includes a $2.5 million payment to the county at groundbreaking and $300,000 per building each year. If all 18 buildings are built, that is $5.4 million annually.

Amazon says its water comes from the industrial cooling reservoir that serves Comanche Peak, not local groundwater or drinking supplies. The company says the reservoir's salinity makes it unsuitable for drinking. It says it draws under existing surface water rights that Vistra owns and leases to it, that no new rights will be sought, and that projected use is under 2% of those rights.

Amazon also says it uses outside air for cooling about 84% of the year. It is putting about $3.75 million into an efficiency project with Arable that it says will return more than 330 million gallons a year to the Brazos Basin.

Those figures are company claims. No independent measurement has been published.

Why a nuclear plant

Nuclear output is steady around the clock, which suits a facility that runs AI and cloud workloads nonstop. For Vistra, a 20-year contract for up to 1,200 MW is a long-term revenue stream from one of the world's largest companies.

The PPA was first disclosed in September 2025, and Amazon was identified as the buyer in February 2026.

It fits a broader pattern. On Oct. 27, the Energy Department announced a conditional loan of up to $5 billion to Constellation Energy to add about 1.1 gigawatts across nuclear plants in Illinois, Maryland and Pennsylvania. Constellation says data center contracts with Google and Amazon require about 1,080 megawatts of added nuclear capacity costing more than $7 billion.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright called it a "nuclear renaissance" and said the department is restarting three power plants and uprating others. Constellation CEO Joe Dominguez described the loan as pairing "private-sector demand and investment with smart federal financing."

Next door in Hood County

The neighboring county has its own data center fight. Hood County commissioners narrowly voted against a data center moratorium, and another resolution could come up. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt said county commissioners lack the authority to impose one and that he would investigate if they tried.

Project Spectrum is also the name of an Amazon-linked development in Hood County, at 2300 Coates Rd, Granbury, spanning more than 1,265 acres.

What comes next

The commission also has a rulemaking on its docket that would write a standard contract for connecting the largest new customers, plus four pending complaints from large customers against ERCOT over its handling of interconnection requests. Whatever it does with Comanche Peak will be an early template.

The open questions are specific. Will commissioners adopt ERCOT's conditions as written? Will they accept Vistra's objection to the stand-alone classification? Both have to be answered before the mid-December deadline.