The filing that decides your project is one you are not allowed to submit

On September 9, 2026, at 5:58 in the evening, ERCOT sent a market notice saying it had begun issuing Batch Zero Verification Requests for Information.

The coverage that followed went where you would expect. Sworn statements. Notaries. Ten business days. Projects dropped from the queue. All of that is accurate and all of it is in Market Notice M-A090926-01, which puts the consequence in one sentence: failure to timely provide a complete response to any ERCOT RFI, or failure to otherwise satisfy the verification requirements, will result in the Large Load being excluded from ERCOT's Batch Zero interconnection process.

Excluded is the whole word. Not delayed. Not conditioned. Out, and waiting for a future study round.

Two days later ERCOT published the user guide for the portal that collects these responses. It is an eighteen page operating manual for a web application, which is why almost nobody read it. It is also the only document that explains how the filing actually happens, and it describes something the market has not priced.

The developer whose project dies does not file the response.

Read the roles in the order ERCOT wrote them

The notice sets up the chain plainly. ERCOT sends the RFI to a primary contact designated by the Interconnecting Transmission Service Provider, through a purpose-built interface in ERCOT's Resource Integration and Ongoing Operations platform. The TSP then designates contacts for the Interconnecting Large Load Entity and, if different, the Interconnecting Distribution Service Provider. Each party answers the questions assigned to it.

Nothing about that is unusual. Texas has always run large load interconnection through the utility. The ILLE is the developer, the TSP is the wires company, and ERCOT's registered counterparty has always been the TSP rather than the load.

The user guide is where the arrangement turns from administrative to consequential. Three lines do the work.

The first: the TSP receives the Verification RFI from ERCOT, invites DSP and Load Entity contacts, and submits the fully completed RFI to ERCOT. The developer does not receive the RFI. It receives an invitation to one.

The second: all contacts invited to participate can provide information and upload documents in the sections assigned to their role, but only the TSP can submit the completed Verification RFI response to ERCOT. The guide repeats it at the submit screen. Only the TSP has the Submit to ERCOT button available.

The third is the one worth sitting with. The TSP reviews all sections, and if corrections are needed, the TSP may return the Verification RFI to the Load Entity. The status tile for this is named Returned to Load Entity, and the guide says the loop can be repeated until all sections are complete.

So the utility opens the file, decides when the developer gets in, judges whether the developer's answers are good enough, and decides when the package goes to ERCOT. The developer's own submit button is labeled Submit to Responsible TSP. It hands work upstream. It does not stop a clock.

The clock belongs to the same party

Ten business days, running from issuance of the RFI. An ILLE may request an extension of no more than five business days, by email to ERCOT.

Read the notice's action-required line next, because it assigns the first task to the utility, not the developer. Each Interconnecting TSP must enter contact information in the portal for the appropriate ILLE and DSP for each conditionally classified Large Load, and must coordinate with them to submit a complete response by the deadline.

The ten days start when ERCOT issues the RFI. The developer's working window starts when the TSP gets around to entering an email address. Every hour between those two events is subtracted from the developer's time to assemble a notarized, exhibit-indexed evidence package, and it is subtracted silently, because the deadline does not move to accommodate a late invitation.

The guide adds a detail that is easy to skim past and expensive to discover in week two. Registration and password reset links expire five days after they are issued. If your designated contact invites a colleague who is travelling, that link can die inside a ten day window, and the fix is an email to the ERCOT service desk asking for a re-send.

Multi-factor authentication is required at every login, delivered by SMS or an authenticator app. That is ordinary security and entirely correct. It is also one more dependency on a specific human being reachable during the only two weeks that matter.

What is actually being checked

The Exhibit List ERCOT posted on September 9 is a spreadsheet with four columns: exhibit identifier, submitter, title of supporting document, file name of supporting document. The sample rows tell you what this audit is really about.

Strip away the procedure and the state of Texas is asking two questions. Do you own the land you said you own. Did you post the money you said you posted.

That is a fair audit. It is the right audit. The queue is enormous relative to anything the grid has served, and the difference between a project that brought its own land and capital and one that reserved a position is exactly the difference the state needs to find. ERCOT told the Commission on August 20 that it had reviewed 290 dynamic models and approximately 18 percent were acceptable on first review. That number is the case for doing this.

The sworn language is narrow and worth quoting, because owners keep reading it as a certification of correctness. The ILLE attestation has an officer with authority to bind the entity declare, under oath before a notary, that the information and documentation are true and accurate to the best of my knowledge, and that after all reasonable inquiry, all material information reasonably responsive to the request has been provided.

All material information reasonably responsive. Not the four documents you were expecting. The scope of that oath is set by the questions, and the guide says the sections and questions vary by the project's conditional classification. A Base Load Committed Large Load under Planning Guide Section 9.2.1.1(1)(f) and a Studied Load Withdrawal-Limited Private Use Network under Sections 9.2.1.1(1) and 9.2.2.2 do not answer the same RFI. Nobody can tell you what is in yours until the TSP opens it.

The failure that has no villain

Here is the scenario that belongs in your risk register, and it involves no bad actor anywhere.

Your project is real. The deed is executed and recorded. The collateral was posted and you have the ACH confirmation. Your officer will sign in front of a notary without hesitation, because every word of the attestation is true.

The RFI issues on a Tuesday. Your TSP is carrying many of these simultaneously, each requiring it to answer its own assigned sections, review two other parties' work and certify its own notarized attestation. Your interconnection manager enters your contact on Friday. You lose three days you never knew you had.

You complete your sections in four days, which is fast. You submit to the TSP. The TSP reviews, decides one document should have been indexed differently on the Exhibit List, and returns it. Status: Returned to Load Entity. You fix it in an hour. It sits in a review queue behind other packages.

Day ten arrives. The package is complete on your side, sworn, uploaded and accurate. It has not been submitted, because you cannot submit it.

The consequence in that scenario is the same one the market notice describes for a project that ignored the RFI entirely. Exclusion is written against the outcome, not the effort. Nothing in the notice distinguishes a developer who failed to respond from a developer whose complete response was not transmitted.

The guide even documents a sequencing trap inside the workflow. If the Load Entity submits before the DSP has responded, the TSP must return the RFI to the Load Entity to unlock it so the DSP can complete its section. Moving quickly, on its own, can put your file into a return loop.

None of this is ERCOT behaving badly. The architecture is inherited: ERCOT's registered relationship runs to the utility, so the filing does too. The audit was ordered on August 3 and ERCOT built the collection mechanism in roughly five weeks, which is fast institutional work. The utilities are absorbing an unbudgeted administrative load in the middle of the largest interconnection queue in the country.

The structure is still the structure. When a rule assigns a consequence to one party and the controls to another, the exposure does not sit where the paperwork suggests.

What an owner can actually do about it

You cannot change who holds the submit button. You can change how much of the ten days you get, and how much evidence exists about why you got less.

Build the package before the RFI arrives. Everything on the Exhibit List is a document that already exists or does not. The executed deed, the ACH confirmation, the letter of credit, the officer resolution establishing binding authority, the notary. Assemble it now, indexed to ERCOT's file naming convention, and the RFI becomes an upload rather than a search. The convention is visible in ERCOT's own sample: BZ9999_ILLE_ExhibitA_VerificationRFI_20260823. Identifier, party, exhibit, document type, date.

Get your contact into the portal before the clock starts. This is the single highest-value call you can make this week. Ask your TSP interconnection manager to enter your designated contacts now for every conditionally classified load, and ask for confirmation when it is done. Registration only has to happen once per email address, and a contact already registered across multiple RFIs can log in directly. Do it while nothing is due.

Name a second contact. Not a courtesy. A five day expiry on registration links inside a ten day window, plus mandatory multi-factor authentication tied to one person's phone, is a single point of failure with a deadline attached.

Ask the TSP one question in writing. What is your internal review turnaround once we submit our sections. You are not entitled to an answer. Asking creates a record of when you asked, and their answer, or absence of one, tells you how much margin to hold in reserve.

Treat the attestation as the legal instrument it is. Your officer is swearing that after all reasonable inquiry, all material information reasonably responsive has been provided, against a question set that varies by classification and that you cannot see in advance. Have counsel read the actual sections in your RFI before the notary is booked, not after.

Use the Message Center and keep what it produces. The portal has a built-in messaging function carrying ERCOT, the TSP, the DSP and you on a specific RFI, with optional due dates on messages. That is a timestamped record inside ERCOT's own system. If your package is complete on day six and unsubmitted on day ten, where you raised that matters.

Know that the follow-up exists. ERCOT may issue additional RFIs seeking clarification or further support, each with its own deadline, and the portal tracks whether a given RFI is Original or Follow-up. Responding once is not finishing.

The date that actually matters

ERCOT has told regulators it will file its verification report on December 10, and that the Commission will take it up on December 17. That report names which projects remain in Batch Zero.

A separate RFI on state and community impacts is still to come, covering tax incentives, ownership, water sources, cooling technology and community mitigation. ERCOT has said it will issue a market notice when that one goes out. That is a second collection, on a second clock, through the same portal and the same chain of hands.

Between now and December 10, a project can be removed for a materially false attestation, which is the outcome the audit was designed to produce. It can also be removed because a complete and truthful package did not clear a utility review queue in time, which is not what the audit was designed to produce and is not distinguished from the first case anywhere in the market notice.

The first risk is managed by telling the truth. The second is managed by starting earlier than the deadline implies, because the deadline is not measured from when you find out.